Restoration
by Meruda
Summary: Everyone has their permanent damage. Sometimes it's the people you least expect who can fix it. NE X Troll, Rated M for adult stuff, though nothing like in Savagery. This is probably a little more like Love is Weird. ;) I was in a better mood. Reviews welcome! EDIT: Yeah I screwed up in posting. Should be fixed now. :) Let me know if not.
1. Chapter 1

Kinta was getting a little tired of waiting to be captured. She'd been overtly skulking around Astranaar now for two weeks and still nothing.

"What I gotta do, Lakshmi? Set up signs sayin' "Unsuspecting and Easily Captured Troll this way?" she asked her pet raptor rhetorically. Lakshmi snorted in brief acknowledgement of her name and went back to sleep. The prey in the forest didn't offer the large reptile much challenge. Even the bears were no match, though they weren't bad eating.

Kinta leaned back against the stump that served as a handy backrest. She'd left tracks all around the lake outside of Astranaar the first week. She dropped a carved troll fetish a couple days ago, in case there were other two-toed non-troll humanoids around. She'd even set up her campfire last night where it could be seen from the village if someone happened to look up. But the night elves either didn't care that there was a troll lurking about, or they were too frightened to investigate.

"This sucks." Kinta muttered, as she unstrung her second-best bow. She hadn't brought her best gear in case the night-elves decided they liked her stuff, but she wasn't the sort of troll to not keep her equipment in the best possible shape, no matter how lousy it was. She checked the string first for any fraying or signs of wear, and then minutely inspected the bow for any fracture or splintering. Then she polished the bow and greased the string with some left over bear-fat, before re-stringing it, and setting it aside. The arrows were just as carefully checked for loose fletching, warping, or dulling on the points. Finally she went over her armor and Lakshmi's harness. She tried to stretch the mundane tasks out as much as she could, knowing that as soon as she finished, she'd have nothing to do for the rest of the night, but even so, she was done before the moon had fully risen.

She put everything back into place neatly and sighed, rocking back on her heels. "Maybe I'll go for a swim. Do you want to go swim, baby?" She'd carefully avoided the word "bath", but Lakshmi settled even more firmly into her nest of leaves and tucked her nose under her tail. The warmer climate reptile didn't enjoy the colder waters of the northern half of the continent, and after one attempt at swimming in Lake Mystral, had refused to go again unless ordered.

"Some friend you are. Spoiled rotten." Kinta chided while undoing the thick indigo braid running down her back. The raptor ignored her. "Fine, be that way. I ain't too much of a wussy lizard to go for a dip." Lakshmi yawned, displaying several rows of pristine white teeth, indicating her refusal to be drawn by insults.

Kinta reached over and scratched the giant raptor under her chin. "I be back in a bit. If a night elf shows up, don't eat 'em. They're too damn hard to find." Lakshmi closed her golden eyes and made the chirruping susurration sound that indicated pleasure.

"That's mah girl." Kinta grabbed her linen towel and soap, stripped off her armor down to a pair of linen shorts and shirt, and started the climb up to the spring that fed the lake surrounding the night elf town below.

The view was pretty. She was willing to admit that, even as she slowly eased into the water that felt like it melted last week. The moon was bright and full, and the dark twilight of the elven lands was sort of comforting. More so than the wide open plains of the Barrens at least. She managed to sink in the last few inches by gritting her teeth, and started soaping up quickly. At least no one was around to make fun of the fact she wore clothes while bathing. They were loose enough she could reach in and scrub everything properly. She hated being naked. Even when she was staying in an inn, she would cover every window, the crack under the door, AND check for any possible holes in the floor before taking a bath. The idea of being naked while outside where anything could be looking was just completely out of the question. She knew realistically that wet linen, especially COLD wet linen, didn't exactly do much for modesty, but somehow it was enough for her to pretend she wasn't exposed.

She didn't like being seen at all really. She'd always been terminally shy. Not because she was ugly or deformed, but just because being looked at for more than a couple of seconds made her start blushing and feeling awkward. The boisterous and outgoing nature of most trolls was completely anathema to her. The directness of male trolls made her feel tongue-tied and stupid, to the point that most of the ones she came across probably thought she was mentally slow, given the way she'd stammer something incoherent and run away when propositioned. Her nightmares featured being singled out, being the focus of attention.

The only profession where she could have been less visible would have been in the assassin school, but that involved too much getting up close and personal with other people. She preferred to keep things far away and impersonal so she signed up for the hunter classes. She enjoyed spending time alone in the forests, far from the troll villages where she always felt like a freak. Unfortunately, she had been in Sen'jin on a rare errand, when Vul'jin decided he wanted an important message delivered to the night elves. She had a reputation for reliability so she'd been tapped. The message was one that required a volunteer hostage to return any possible answer. She had spent two miserable weeks not just trying to attract attention but the attention of the enemy.

She was shivering by the time she was sure all the bits were clean, and she tossed the bar of soap over her shoulder towards the nearest bank so she could start rinsing off.

The grunt of surprise couldn't have been more startling if it had been a gunshot. Kinta ducked down until the water was up to her chin, before turning around.

A night elf was standing there, one with lavender-colored skin, long bright white hair, and those weird glowing amber eyes, holding her bar of soap in one hand, and a staff in the other. He had a triangular face with high cheekbones, and no facial hair, his face unlined and innocent of any signs to determine how old he was. His hair was left to fall loosely about his shoulders, long white locks falling in front of each of his ears. Kinta stared at him in disbelief. He was wearing cheap linen pants of the sort favored by those starting out into the world, a thin baggy shirt lacking in any aesthetic value, and a pair of linen hand wraps that went from halfway up his forearm to the first knuckle of his fingers. Despite his neophyte garments, he was taller than she was, with the wide muscular shoulders and narrow waist typical of the night elves. He looked just as shocked to see her as she was to see him.

_Loa, ya gotta be kidding me. Do I have to get captured by a baby? Oh well, maybe he'll be too young to really have a good reason to kill trolls on sight. Not that he looks capable of killing a rogue bunny rabbit. _She thought.

She cleared her throat, before saying in heavily accented Common, "Well, congratulations, ya caught me!" She tried to smile at him, but something about the expression on his face made it die on her face.

The elf didn't say anything, staring down at her with those eerie eyes.

"I bet ya wanna take me right to your leaders?" She prompted hopefully.

The elf thought about it, while she shivered. "No." He eventually said, his husky voice barely audible. He started to turn around to leave, and found himself facing a mouthful of teeth.

Lakshmi made the softest of her ominous snarling noises, the kind that told anything without a full set of plate armor that she knew exactly which soft squishy bits tasted the best, and was only refraining from tearing them out on a moment-by-moment basis for completely arbitrary reasons which might change with the smallest provocation.

The night elf froze. Kinta groaned mentally. This was not going well. "Knock it off, ya stupid lizard," she hissed in Zandali. "I'm tryin' ta get captured." The raptor hooted in confusion. Lakshmi didn't understand why her troll was upset. It would be perfectly simple to knock the elf down and eat it. Problem solved. The subtleties of the reason for the trip to the strange, cold forest had been lost on her simple lizard brain.

Kinta moved towards the bank where her towel was. The elf turned halfway to look over his shoulder at the noise, his gaze flicking over the transparently wet linen shirt once, before he quickly turned back, saying tersely, "Excuse me." Kinta paused in surprise at the courtesy, (how stupid is it to turn your back on an enemy?) before continuing on to clamber out of the water, and quickly wrap herself in the towel.

"Uh. Thanks. Now about you capturin' me, I'm willin' ta go along quietly, and if ya wanted to make sure to get any v-v-valuable letters or intelligence I'm probably carryin', my camps-s-site is right down the hill." Her lips felt numb, and she hoped the words weren't too confusing. She could feel her teeth trying to chatter.

The elf risked a glance over his shoulder at her, only fully looking at her when he confirmed she was covered. "You're cold." He said.

Kinta frowned. "Yes, so the s-s-sooner we could get ta a nice warm building, maybe one in the city down there, the b-b-better."

The elf shrugged a shoulder. "I don't want to capture you." He paused, apparently realizing that this was not sufficient, and added, "It isn't convenient."

"Not c-c-convenient?!" Kinta shrieked. "I'm a troll! In elven lands! It's your d-d-duty to capture me!"

The elf blinked at her. "What does a troll know about elven duty?" His tone remained perfectly neutral, though she got the impression that he was starting to be annoyed, as he shifted his stance, the muscles in his shoulders rolling back as he straightened up.

Kinta opened her mouth and then shut it. "The preservation of one's b-b-borders is a standard duty for all those who would take advantage of the p-p-promise of safety found there." This was definitely NOT how she saw this going. Trust elves not to do anything right.

The elf pondered this. "I suppose so. But these lands are debated by the Horde. The presence of your Splintervale post, and the Zoram Strand fort seem to imply that you feel you have a claim here. I don't see much in the way of safety promised, therefore I don't feel that the standard duty argument holds much weight. Perhaps if you were in Auberdine, I would feel more inclined to your way of thinking."

Kinta stared at the elf in complete confusion. He seemed far too relaxed for a youngling, especially in the face of Lakshmi's continued attempts to intimidate him by breathing heavily down his neck. The only weapon he was holding was his staff which looked like he'd just found a handy stick and picked off the bigger branches. Surely he was hungry for prestige or reknown. Capturing one of the enemy was usually a great way to gain both.

"That is a reasonable point, however you've caught me fair and square without any weapons, and I am honor bound to surrender." Kinta said, stamping both feet to try and get the feeling back into her toes. She'd intended to be back at camp, wrapped in wool blankets next to the fire by now, not having to argue herself into being captured.

"You have a loaded raptor pointed at me. I'm perfectly willing to consider it even." The elf moved to step sideways around the raptor. Lakshmi looked at her owner, expecting the attack command. Kinta shook her head, and jerked it to one side. The raptor sidestepped in front of the elf.

The elf sighed, and turned back to the troll with a much-put-upon expression on his face. "Do you mind?"

Kinta had had time to review the conversation in her mind. "What do ya m-mean it's not convenient?" She asked.

"I'm not going back to any of the night elf towns. I have business in Stonetalon. I was just coming up here for a bath before leaving." The elf tilted his head to one side, "Actually, I don't see why I shouldn't have my bath anyways, if you're finished."

"What?!"

The elf slid his shirt off, revealing a torso as equally well-developed as any troll male, the muscles over his ribs well defined, with deep grooves carving shadows around his abs. He folded it neatly and set it on the ground while Kinta stared open-mouthed. When he reached for the waistband of his pants, she spun around, cheeks blazing. Lakshmi whined, sensing Kinta's distress. Kinta winced at the soft sound of his pants hitting the ground. The idea of the elf being naked and splashing around right behind her made her horribly uncomfortable. Especially followed closely by the idea that she didn't know if he'd been watching HER bathe. At least she hadn't been naked. The thought made her clutch her towel more tightly around her.

Kinta massaged her forehead with her finger, trying not to listen to the splashing sounds. She absently moved closer to the raptor for warmth and comfort. She honestly didn't know what to do. She'd never expected to be unable to convince someone to capture her. She'd been more worried about being treated brutally, or with cruelty, not complete indifference!

"When ya think it would be convenient?" Kinta asked.

"What?"

Kinta turned around out of habit to repeat, "When would it .." She trailed off, realizing the elf was standing in the shallows, the water only going halfway up his thighs. She choked and promptly spun around again, saying in a strangled tone, "It be convenient."

"When would what be convenient?" asked the elf calmly, as if he wasn't standing there **naked** and … and **hanging** out, soaping himself up with HER soap. She was going to have to get a new bar.

Kinta gritted her teeth, and squeezed out, "For you to capture me and take me to ya leaders."

"Oh, it'll be at least two weeks. Maybe a month."

Kinta's shoulders slumped, and she bit her lip with indecision. The night elf was the first one she'd even caught sight of in two weeks, aside from the Sentinels who very definitely wouldn't want to ask questions first and shoot later. It might be faster to stick with the elf, than to hang around indefinitely hoping for a more ambitious one to wander by.

"But after that you'd DEFINITELY be able to?"

"I don't see why you're so desperate to be captured. If you like being mistreated, surely there's some troll at home willing to tie you up and spank you." The elf tried not to laugh as he watched the troll's shoulders go rigid again a few seconds after she translated what he said. If she pulled the towel any tighter around herself she was going to rip it in half. It took her nearly a full minute of choking and swearing in her own language before she managed to get control of herself again.

"There is not a ... never mind. I'm not desperate to be captured, and I don't want to be mistreated. Look, the town is literally thirty minutes walk that way. Can't ya take an hour, capture me, turn me in, and then ya can go on to Stonetalon?"

He thought about it. The troll didn't seem like she was that much of a threat at first glance, but it was his job to find out what she was doing here, so obviously trying to attract attention. Her raptor was one of the biggest ones he'd ever seen, with odd coloring, implying a higher caliber hunter than the equipment she'd left behind in camp. Why was she pretending to be less competent? "Nope."

"Why th' hell not?"

"Because I have orders to go to Stonetalon as soon as possible. I suppose if you wanted to insist on coming along, I could capture you after I'm done." He sounded distinctly dubious.

"But you've got time for a bath." She accused.

"Hygiene is very important." She could hear him stepping out of the water. She squawked in outrage when the fine spray of droplets from him shaking himself off splattered her.

"There's no need to get upset. I didn't bring a towel. I don't suppose you'd want to share yours?" He asked, just to watch the dark purple flush rise up the back of her normally light blue neck again.

"Absolutely not."

"There's no need to get huffy." He said with an injured tone to his voice. "It's not my fault you can't plan to get captured on an appropriate schedule."

She turned around at that to glare at him. "Are ya making fun of me?" He was only wearing his shirt, which wasn't long enough, and his handwraps, his pants tossed over one arm. She squeezed her eyes shut, and added angrily, "And hurry up and get dressed!"

"Why would I make fun of you? And you don't need to look so insulted. The water's really cold!"

"Because elves have lousy senses of humor. What does the water being cold have to do with being insulting? I ain't insulted, I'm confused, and cold and wet, and I wish ya'd hurry up and get dressed." The genuinely fretful bewilderment in her voice made him pause as he was pulling his pants up.

"How old are you?" He asked, suddenly worried that despite her generous breast size, he might be dealing with a juvenile. She was a good five inches shorter than he was, and normally the trolls were a little taller than the night elves. Surely they wouldn't have sent a child to get captured!

"Twenty two. What does that have to do with anything?! Look, could ya hurry please? I can't feel my toes anymore."

He exhaled in relief. Trolls were considered adults around age seventeen, so he finished pulling his pants up and said, "Well, I didn't want to explain to a child that cold water tends to make the tissues of the penis retract and shrink to protect the sensitive nerve endings. Similar to the way it makes the tissue of your nipples contract and harden so that they poke straight out even through your linen towel and your shirt." He paused, because the troll's face was so dark blue with blushing that he thought she might be having a stroke, "So I thought perhaps you were insulted because I'd lost a couple inches in your presence due to an aggressive lack of interest in your charms, but it really was just the cold water." A moment passed before he added, "I can't think why else you'd insist on my putting my pants on. I've been told I have excellent proportions. Didn't you notice?" He struck a pose, flexing his muscles .

"Ya know what? Forget it, I'll just go turn myself in." Getting shot by the Sentinels couldn't be this bad. Multiple thoughts swirled around her head. Indignation at being thought to be a child, irritation that he was refusing to capture her, embarrassment at the fact he probably realized her level of sexual experience was in the negative zone, and the very strong desire to go put on every single item of clothing she owned because he'd so casually mentioned the state of her nipples. She felt a sudden powerful urge to go home and hide. This mission was turning into a complete disaster.

"That doesn't seem like a good idea. The sentinels will just shoot you and burn the body. And they'll put your raptor down." His tone was utterly bland, but his words shook her deeply.

Kinta shivered, and looped an arm around Lakshmi's neck, scratching the beautiful pale white-grey scales. "No." For some reason the reminder of Lakshmi's dependence on her decisions helped her find a sane spot in the confusion and embarrassment. She took a deep breath.

"Was it the comment about your nipples? I was just making an anatomical comparison."

"I don' wanna discuss anatomy, yours or mine." She was proud of the way that came out without even so much as a quiver.

"This capture isn't going to be nearly as fun as it could be. I'm dressed, so we might as well go and get your stuff, if it's not too far. I am on a deadline." She opened her eyes to see him heading down the path away from the spring as if he hadn't a care in the world. For some reason that was one irritation too much. She snapped her fingers twice and hissed a command in Zandali.

Lakshmi sprung forward as quick as lightning, and her jaws clamped down on the elf's neck and shoulder. He stopped instantly. "Did you want something?" He asked with deep sarcasm.

"What's ya name?" She asked.

"Elian'do Malfillion Moonriver. At your service, I'm sure. Hopefully not as raptor food."

"Whatever. I'm just gonna call you Eli."

"Eli?" He sounded amused.

"I realize this isn't a usual situation, but if it's all the same to you, an' I damn sure hope it is, 'cause otherwise I'm gonna have ta let Lakshmi eat ya, I'd appreciate if you could manage to take us a little bit seriously. This ain't a joke ta me."

"Lovely lady, how could you suggest that I'm not taking you seriously?" He could feel the raptor's stinky carnivore drool dripping down his shoulder, as the sharp points of its teeth made dents into the flesh of his shoulder. He slipped both hands into the pockets of the linen pants as nonchalantly as he could.

"'Cause you ain't asked me who I am. Not using someone's name is one sign ya don't take them seriously. Another one is empty compliments." She sidled past him on the path, and headed down without looking back over her shoulder.

The raptor bumped him with her head, releasing his neck and shoulder with a deep growl indicating that the night elf taste test could be resumed at any moment, if he was feeling uncooperative. The elf peered after the rapidly disappearing troll, and back at the raptor, who snarled at him again. Her insight into his not asking her name had surprised him.

"Fine, fine, I'm going." He removed his hands from his pockets with great care and scrambled down the path after the troll, Lakshmi nipping at his heels whenever she thought he needed encouragement.

By the time the raptor herded him into the small camp, the troll had already pulled on wool pants and matching shirt, and was currently lacing her leather armor into place over top of it.

"You did take the wet stuff off first right? Otherwise you're still going to freeze, and the water's going to soak through and ruin your leathers." He asked. "Not to mention the chafing."

"What I'm wearing ain't ya business. Ya business is in Stonetalon." She stood up, trying to tie the laces for her thigh armor onto her jerkin with uncooperative fingers numb from the cold.

"Want me to help with those?" He offered after she dropped the lace halfway through for the third time.

"Want me to gut you?" She snarled in Zandali, even as the cursed lace finally went through the last hole, allowing her to pull it tight and knot it.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." She picked up her bow and arrows, and the bags, glad she'd packed everything away before her bath. "Lead on."


	2. Chapter 2

He had to admit the trip into the mountains had been uneventful, as they sat on the top of one of the peaks, watching the elementals scurry below, at the end of the first week.

Elian'do had figured out a few things about his odd companion. She didn't like talking about herself, and would usually ignore any conversational gambits about life in a troll village or any friendships she had with her people, though she seemed perfectly willing to listen to him ramble about himself. Ditto for any discussions about why she wanted to be captured. She really didn't like any references to sex, nakedness, intimacy, or genitalia. When he'd referred to a landmark as looking like a pair of breasts, she didn't talk to him for two hours. She was perfectly willing to talk about the places she'd been, the other races she'd met, politics, the wilderness, and her raptor. He found her observations were usually accurate and pointed. She was serious, quiet, and not prone to making wise cracks, though occasionally she'd crack a smile at his attempts at humor. When they'd stopped the first day to sleep, she'd set up a surprisingly elaborate tent with her raptor guarding the door, and then, and only then had removed the damp linen underclothing she'd bathed in. There were brownish-red spots where the chafing had rubbed her skin off and she'd bled onto the clothing. He'd taken the opportunity to inspect them after she'd gone back into her tent after having put them into the sun to bleach and dry. But she had never made a sound of complaint for the entire six hours they'd hiked into the mountains.

She was also an excellent shot, and her raptor was extremely well trained. He wasn't sure if she'd decided that he was probably too green to be useful, or if she just enjoyed killing things, because she always dispatched any suggested targets with an admirable efficiency before he'd had a chance to get close. That suited him just fine, because the problem with dressing like a neophyte priest was the expectation that he'd fight like one, and he felt remarkably stupid hitting things with his stick. He kept waiting for her to make some snide comment about how it was lucky for him that she came along, but she never did.

The problem was that he couldn't decide whether her reserve was natural, or the caution of someone playing a part. All he'd ever read about trolls described their casual attitudes towards sex, life, and other amusements, and the encounters he'd had with them had confirmed the stereotype. They were fearsome warriors because they didn't take death seriously, recovering from hellish wounds with remarkable rapidity. He'd had an assignment once to spy out Revantusk village. It'd had been a festival night, and he'd been amused at the amount of indiscriminate behavior going on. It had been difficult to write his report without using the word "orgy" every two sentences, and as far as he could tell every troll in the village had been involved. Was his troll just an aberration with a bad case of shyness? Or was she pretending to a juvenile prudishness to try and seem less experienced and less of a threat? If she was, surely she wouldn't be so quick and capable to dispatch the wildlife, unless she was particularly stupid. And if she was stupid, why would the trolls have sent her on a sensitive mission? She should miss a few times, or expend ammo needlessly if she was trying to convey the impression of not being a threat. Either way, he needed to make a decision, as opposed to wasting more time pretending to be on the pointless sort of errand that the young untried elves were sent on to build confidence.

His instincts were sure that she was exactly what she appeared to be, but he had no proof to back up what was a feeling. He was so lost in his musings, that when she tapped him on the shoulder, he jumped.

"Sorry, was studying the elementals' movement patterns." He said quickly.

"So ya see it too?" She asked.

He blinked and peered down at the elementals. The earth elementals had been scurrying about in no pattern whatsoever for the last two hours, but now they were forming a circle and pounding the ground. The ground started to tremble.

The looser rocks above them started to bounce down, as the tremors got more violent. The top of the mountain began to crumble.

"We need ta get off this ledge!" She screamed over the sound of shearing rock.

"There's a cave further down!" He screamed back, pointing at the shadow he'd seen earlier on the climb up.

She squinted in the direction he pointed, and nodded, before slapping her raptor on the shoulder and pointing, yelling something in her own language. Lakshmi began bounding down the rocks towards the cave, as the elf and troll scrambled after her.

"Look out!" Eli grabbed Kinta's arm, and pulled her back, a second before the boulder she was about to jump to was smashed by a larger rock tumbling down. She spun off balance, and he wrapped both arms around her tightly for the space of one breath, as the ground shook beneath them. And then they both were running, scrambling to stay ahead of the avalanche of rock and dirt that was inexorably sliding towards them. It seemed like there was barely any air to breathe, as it filled with dust. They tripped and stumbled down the mountain, the smaller rocks battering them mercilessly.

Eli swore as a rock fell away beneath him, causing him to lag behind as he had to jump for another spot further from the cave. Kinta dove into the cave, and turned to look behind her. No elf. She poked her head back out, and saw him racing towards her, barely two steps ahead of a tidal wave of rock.

He wasn't going to make it. The rocks were moving faster than he was, and his brain was coolly reporting in exact feet and inches just how much he was going to be short when the rocks carried him away and crushed him into pulp under three tons of rock. And then the troll was there, her hand out-stretched, as she clung to one edge of the cave yelling something he couldn't hear. He had no choice. He jumped out into space. She caught his forearm, and pulled. Eli went flying into the cave, even as Kinta fell back flat into the mouth of the cave. He managed to land in a dive roll, coming up to his feet just in time to get knocked over by the avalanche pounding down past the cave as the earth groaned and shook with unimaginable violence.

He couldn't have told how long the earthquake lasted, minutes or seconds, but when it was over, his ears were ringing with a high pitched keening sound. His eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, and he realized that the keening sound was coming from what used to be the mouth of the cave. Now it was a depressingly solid wall of rocks. He staggered to his feet, and headed towards the sound, coughing on the clouds of dust slowly settling.

The troll's raptor was nosing at a pile of rocks, and whining. He could see patches of blue skin under the rocks.

He felt a sudden spike of fear and anger as he hurried over, flinging rocks out of the way as quickly as he could. What the hell was she thinking, risking her life for his? What sort of trick was that?! What was she trying to do, make him feel obligated? He hadn't asked her name, for exactly the reason she'd pointed out. He didn't want to see her as a person if he could help it. He wanted to know what she was up to, and that was it. If she was part of some trick, it was his job to put her out of the way, rather than risk her causing trouble in the towns where vulnerable civilians and children were. The fact she'd just saved his life was a distinctly unwelcome complication. And if she'd died under the rocks that should have crushed him, he'd be … really annoyed.

As he moved one of the bigger rocks off her torso, she coughed, and he immediately felt relieved, though it was a brief sensation. He could feel her blood dripping down his arms from the rocks he was moving. The raptor alternated licking the dust off her face, and bumping him on the shoulder with worry while he kept excavating. As he moved the last of the rocks and got the first glimpse of the total damage, he swore. Repeatedly.

Everything hurt. That was the first thought Kinta had when she woke up in darkness. Her pet was the second.

"Lakshmi?" She whispered, her voice strangely hoarse and barely audible. The raptor responded immediately with a chirrup, and she relaxed, sinking back into the comfort of unconsciousness.

When she woke up again, it was still dark, and everything still hurt, but some of the fuzziness had faded. She felt a warm body close behind her, with something warm and heavy over her stomach. Lakshmi must have gotten into the tent again, she thought muzzily. Sometimes if the weather was really cold or particularly nasty, Lakshmi would pull the tent pegs up on the back wall, and sneak into the tent. She'd have to get up to close the back wall again.

"Lakshmi, move." She murmured, as she started to try and push herself upright. The warm thing across her stomach tightened, preventing her from moving.

"Don't do that lady. You've still got some broken bones, and moving isn't a good idea," said a soft husky voice right in her ear.

She would have screamed if she'd had the air. As it was, she started coughing, making the broken ribs protest with pain that obliterated all thought for a few moments.

"I wouldn't do that either." Eli muttered. "Go back to sleep."

"What are ya doin' in my tent?!" She hissed.

"We're not in your tent. We're stuck in the cave, and you're badly hurt. We have to share the only blanket that survived the avalanche or we're both gonna freeze to death." He yawned.

She paused, trying to sort through the slowly returning memories. The avalanche, the cave. Wait ... "Stuck?"

"Well, there's probably a back way out, but there are troggs between it and us, and I wasn't going to leave you behind helpless while we've still got some food and water. The front is completely blocked, yes." He patted her lightly on the stomach, and she suddenly realized that his skin was touching her naked flesh. His chest was warm on her back, and his hips were tight behind hers.

"Where are my clothes!?" He could hear the note of panic rising in her voice, and sighed.

"You took a lot of damage. I needed to take your clothes off so I could make sure I didn't miss any injuries. Not that there was much left of your clothes anyways. Don't worry, I didn't look."

"Where are **your** clothes?!"

He decided this wasn't the time to answer that question. "Lady, you still have four broken ribs, a shattered tibia, compound fracture in your arm, you're bruised from the forehead to the knees, and you haven't bathed in three days. It's not your sexiest look so you're probably safe from my overwhelming lust. Now, if you're not going to sleep, do you think you could eat or drink anything?"

She took several slow breaths to try to calm the panic down. He did have a point, even if she was having a hard time accepting the fact they were both lacking clothes. And it was really dark. Super dark. He couldn't see anything anyways. She muttered, "Drink."

"Ok. Don't move."

She felt his warmth slide away from her, and the cold air of the cave slide into the vacancy, before he bent over to tuck the blanket back into place. She blinked as long wisps of white hair tickled across her face.

He loped across the cave to the measly two packs that were all that were left of their bags, and grabbed one of the water skins. He was only wearing a linen loincloth, and the hand wraps. He came back and squatted in front of her. She immediately shut her eyes, rather than stare straight into the bulge between his thighs, that was only eight inches from her face.

His expression didn't change though he noticed her suddenly shutting her eyes as he approached. He tilted her chin up, pressing the water skin to her lips, letting only the slowest of trickles come out. It seemed like the tissues in her mouth soaked up the water before it even got to her throat. It also tasted wonderful.

He took the skin away after a few mouthfuls, despite her noise of protest. "Let's make sure that stays put first. Then you can have some more." He shifted positions to sit down next to her, and she opened an eye cautiously. He was still mostly naked, but he didn't seem to mind her looking at him, as he shoved a handful of white hair back over his shoulder. She privately admitted he did have a point about having excellent proportions.

"How is Lakshmi?" She asked, suddenly afraid. If she was this bad, why wasn't Lakshmi next to her keening like she did whenever Kinta was unwell?

"She's fine. Better than you are, at any rate. She's chasing cave rats, which she keeps trying to tuck into bed with you."

She smiled briefly. Lakshmi liked bringing her presents. "Can I sit up?"

"Probably not without help. Let me know if it hurts too much." He carefully slid his hands underneath her, avoiding the broken ribs as much as possible, as he slowly moved her into a sitting position. It hurt, but she didn't make a sound aside from breathing sharply when her broken leg moved. She could feel something heavy and rigid wrapped around it. He settled her between his bent knees, letting her lean back against his chest, before reaching down to pull the blanket up to her shoulders.

She looked around the small cave, now that she could see a little more. He'd been right in his assessment of the blocked mouth of the cave. There was no way that they could shift the rocks in order to get out. She looked down at the blanket. It was one of the thick bearskins she'd tanned in Ashenvale. She'd tucked it under Lakshmi's harness to keep her warm while they were up in the mountains. In the back of her brain was a very small voice that was constantly screaming that she was naked under the bearskin, and sitting in a night elf's lap, while he was also mostly naked, and that this was just NOT OK! The rest of her was willing to ignore it until she didn't hurt so much and could maybe do something about it.

"We've been here three days?" She asked.

"Give or take. I didn't exactly bring a sundial. I'm going off the fact I've felt like sleeping twice since the rocks fell in."

"Food?"

"How do you feel about slightly-chewed raw cave rat?"

"I s'pose it's better than starving."

"Ok, then you can have the cave rat, and I'll eat the dried fruit and the smoked fish." He said cheerfully.

She punched him in the leg with her good arm, the broken left one strapped to her chest.

"Ow! You have no sense of humor, you know that?"

"Maybe ya not funny." She grumbled.

"Was that a joke?" He asked incredulously, even as he reached up to move her dark blue hair over her shoulder so it wasn't tickling his chest. "Did YOU make a joke?"

Her cheeks darkened with a blush she was glad he couldn't see. He smirked as he could see the tips of her ears going dark.

"Maybe." She said. "Can I have some more water?"

"Things feeling relatively stable?"

"Yes."

He put the water skin to her lips again, letting her take some larger sips. "So, I know trolls heal fast. How long does it take you to heal broken bones?"

She swallowed the mouthful of water. "Fully with multiple breaks? Two weeks. Enough I can walk with a crutch? A week if we're lucky."

"We've got about that much in rations, unless the cave rat sounds appetizing, at which point we can stretch a bit. Nothing to build a fire with, even if the chance of alerting the troggs by smoking ourselves out wasn't a problem."

"Weapons?"

"Your bow got smashed. About half your arrows were salvageable."

She started swearing in her language.

"It's not that bad. You still have your raptor, after all!"

She kept swearing inventively and expressively.

"Look, it's really not that bad." He tried again.

"Oh? You ever tried to beat a trogg with ya stick? The little bastards run and get five friends. They're worse than murlocs! They are going to slaughter us without my bow!"

He felt a little guilty at her obvious upset. "Ok, I wasn't going to mention this, but about the stick…" He started uncomfortably.

"And I can't run away from them, and priests ain't that quick, no offense, so it's not like we can avoid the little shits. I'm sure it's a good stick, from a valuable tree of venerable knowledge or some kodo-shit like that, but. . ."

He leaned forward, to hold a hand out in front of her. He flexed his arm sharply, and the blades of a fist weapon sprung out from where they'd been hiding under the linen hand wraps. "I'm not a priest."

She reached up to poke the blades with one finger. "Ya one of the assassins."

"Yeah." He flexed his wrist again, retracting the blades, and leaned back.

"Ya probably got six or eight knives hiding in ya pants."

"Ten, but I'm not wearing them at the moment?"

"I noticed." She muttered, before catching herself and saying quickly. "So the elvies sent ya ta find out what I wanted."

He managed not to laugh at that first muttered comment, before responding, "Safer that way."

She made a disparaging noise in her throat. "I got mashed by rocks, you stuck in a cave, and this seems safer to ya?"

"Not if you're going to look at it that way."

"I need ta find a handy corner, or the shit's just gonna get deeper over here." She whistled sharply, and Lakshmi came running out of one of the multiple dark corridors branching off from their little area, half a rat hanging from her mouth.

He thought about offering to help, but something about the set of her jaw and shoulders told him that it would not only be futile but counter-productive. He shifted positions, tucking his feet underneath him, as he moved to lift her up to a standing position, letting the blanket fall away, and removing his hands the instant she was upright. She wobbled on her good one leg, even as the raptor sidled up beside her. She leaned on Lakshmi's scaly sides, waiting for the dizziness to pass. She looked down at her broken leg, curious as to what he used for a cast. Lots of linen was wrapped around what looked like …

"Ya used my bow as a splint?!"

"It was already broken, I promise."

"Says the assassin."

"You really need to work on your trust issues. We've been using that corner." He pointed.

Kinta decided immediately to try and forget the "we" he just used. The implication was not one she was prepared to deal with. She hopped carefully in the direction indicated, using Lakshmi for balance, but it was still a painful, slow, and exhausting experience. There was a little pile of linen scraps that were available for the necessary, though they looked very familiar.

By the time they got back to the bearskin, she was ready to dive into the painless and uncomplicated world of sleep. The chill of the cave was working its way deep into her muscles, and she was starting to be able to pick out individual bruises based on the aches.

Eli was waiting for her to get back, comfortably lounging underneath the bearskin. When she hobbled back into range, he stood up without saying anything, and picked her up. She wanted to object, but she was honestly too grateful to no longer be standing up. He set her down gently on the skin, and then lay down next to her, pulling the remainder of the hide over top of them. The warmth of his body felt so good she couldn't help but groan in relief, even as exhaustion dragged her back into sleep.

Eli waited until he was certain she was out, before he muttered, "Keep watch, Lakshmi." in perfect Zandali. The raptor hooted in acknowledgement, before flopping down next to them to finish chewing on her rat. He looped his arm over the troll's stomach so she wouldn't try to roll over onto her broken arm, and fell asleep himself.


	3. Chapter 3

Kinta woke up again after a series of confusing dreams, all of which faded into a vague feeling of unease. She started to roll over, but the jolt of pain when her broken leg hit the floor jerked her fully awake. She lifted her head to look around, and froze when she saw two hulking shapes slowly moving into the main cave area. Neither one was Eli or Lakshmi. The trogolydyte cave-dwellers moved forward cautiously, pausing every so often to sniff the air.

She didn't move, uncomfortably aware that creatures that lived in the dark relied primarily on their sense of smell and hearing. One of them stopped to pick something up. It looked like most of one of Lakshmi's rats. They kept moving forward, and she frowned. Soon they'd be close enough that they wouldn't be able to miss her. But if she whistled for Lakshmi, they'd be on her before the raptor would even get into the same room.

Her ribs were starting to ache with the difficulty of not moving. Then a dazzling flash went off, blinding her and the troggs, who screeched in surprise. She took advantage of the moment to whistle sharply and scrabble for a handy rock. Her vision cleared in time to see the second trogg falling on top of the first one, his throat ripped out by the blades on Eli's fist. She blinked. It had only been a few seconds. Even she and Lakshmi couldn't kill two troggs that quickly. He also looked different. It took her a moment to realize the difference was the fact he was wearing tightly-fitted black leathers, as opposed to the cheap linen robes, and his hair was pulled back into a ponytail instead of falling loosely around his shoulders.

He knelt down to rifle through the troggs' possessions, even as Lakshmi came bounding into the room at a dead run, skidding to a halt next to Kinta's side, hooting anxiously.

"You're a bit late baby." She murmured to the raptor in Zandali, even as Eli stood up and walked over. She looked up at him, disconcerted by the difference in him. It wasn't just the clothing, though the fact that the leathers seemed cut to accentuate his muscles didn't hurt. He had completely shed any pretense of harmlessness, with the relief of someone who doesn't need to hide what he is anymore. His movement was now more like a predator's, the attitude of lethality restrained. He absently shook the blood off the two fist weapons, even as the blades retracted.

"All right?" He asked tersely in Common, before turning to give Lakshmi a dirty look. "Tell your lizard that next time it's her turn to watch you, she shouldn't go chasing cave rats."

"It's not her fault," said Kinta automatically in defense of her beloved pet. "She don't understand Common. And she ain't likely to listen to an elf anyways."

Eli made a noncommittal noise, even as he squatted down next to Kinta, and pulled the blanket back. She screeched in protest, automatically trying to cover herself with her good hand. He sighed. "Look, lady, I have literally seen and felt every inch of you naked. Amazingly enough, I have managed to restrain myself from raping you so far. Can you please stop freaking out every time I need to check your injuries? I'm not in the habit of forcing myself on women."

She blushed and turned to look at the wall. "Sorry. It's not you. Well, it's sort of you, but only because ya the one sitting there. I just don't like … feeling exposed." She muttered.

"Or vulnerable, I suspect. Most people don't." His hands gently prodded the arm bound across her chest. "Does it still feel broken? If not, we can unwrap it."

"It doesn't hurt as much." She kept looking determinedly at the wall trying to pretend she was somewhere else.

He started unwrapping the arm, his fingers so quick and light she barely felt them touching her. When he'd finished, she gently pushed against the ground with her newly freed arm to test it, at first lightly, but then with enough pressure to push herself up into a sitting position, facing away from him. "Hurts, but I don't think it's broken any more."

His fingers traced down her back, along both sides of her spine causing a ticklish sensation that made her shiver. "Bruising's better too, almost gone in some places. Breathing's still shallow so the ribs aren't fixed yet." He muttered. "Think you could stand a short ride?" He watched her shoulders slump and added, "There's a bath at the end of it. A hot one!"

She turned her head to glare at him suspiciously over one shoulder, "If ya lying about a bath, I will find a way to hurt ya. A lot."

"That's the spirit. Will your raptor let you ride her? I'd rather have my hands free." He said cheerfully.

"I'll ask her." After quite a bit of argument and coaxing in Zandali, Lakshmi agreed. Eli folded up the bearskin into a pad, and set it on the back of the raptor. Kinta stood nearby, using his staff as a crutch, scratching the raptor's chin while he packed.

"Hold still baby." Kinta murmured, as she hopped closer to the raptor. She set both hands on the raptor's shoulders, and took a deep, painful breath, preparing to jump. She hadn't heard Eli come up behind her, so when his hands landed on her thighs just below her buttocks, she jumped in shock. He promptly lifted her up onto the back of the raptor, and she had to cling onto Lakshmi's neck to keep from going right off the other side again.

He slung the two packs they had left over his shoulder, as well as the staff. "It's not far." He said again, in encouragement. Her jaw was stiff and she nodded in silent acknowledgement of his comment. She knew as well as he did that the bouncing of the raptor's gait was going to be agony on the broken bones and bruises. Lakshmi wasn't trained for riding, wasn't trained into a smooth gait or being guided. He didn't say anything else, but headed off down one of the tunnels.

Kinta clicked her tongue, and murmured in Zandali, "Follow the bossy elf, Lakshmi. Quiet as you can." Lakshmi headed off after the elf obediently.

Kinta had a few moments to be impressed with how invisible he was. A few times she only caught sight of his outline in the darkness, or a gleam of white hair. If it hadn't been for Lakshmi's nose, they would have lost him after the first turn. Soon she forgot to watch for him, as the throbbing got worse and worse. The pain seemed to travel up her leg and into her torso, until she was nearly crying with the effort to keep from gasping for breath at every step. She couldn't keep track of how many twists or turns they took, as she buried her face in Lakshmi's neck, to try and muffle any cries of pain that escaped whenever Lakshmi took it in her head to jump down a small incline, or make a sudden turn. She knew she should be listening for troggs, or watching the path in case they needed to find their way back, but she simply couldn't spare any energy past the struggle to keep from crying out loud.

She didn't notice when the raptor stopped, her teeth gritted together, her fist knotted in the bearskin pad. Eli patted the raptor, who was anxiously craning her head around to check on Kinta who wasn't responding to her. "Come on lady. We're here."

Kinta lifted her head, though she didn't look at him as she took a shuddering breath. "Thank th' loa for that." She ran a hand over her face, obliterating any trace of the tears that had managed to sneak out.

"Try to lean over this way, and I'll catch you." He said, a hint of admiration in his voice hiding behind a great deal of sympathy. He hadn't expected her to manage to be as quiet as she had. The troll uncurled her fingers from the bearskin slowly and stiffly. She took several ragged breaths, before she slid towards him.

He caught her easily, but even that small motion elicited a hiss of pain squeezed past tightly compressed lips. "Hang in there. If you can manage to stand for a few seconds, the worst is over."

She wanted to burst into tears, glad that the ordeal was over, glad that she was finally off the raptor, but that inner core of resolve kept them back. He was still an enemy, even if they'd been forced into an intimacy that still bothered her. The strangely comforting feeling of being held and supported was diminished by the fact that she was being held by a night elf. She managed to say, "I can stand."

He handed her the staff, before carefully setting her down on the one leg. She wobbled, and he reached out to stabilize her. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." She said with determination, though she wasn't sure that she could follow through. She could feel the muscles in her legs quivering from the exertion of the ride, and the stress of the pain. Her hands tightened on the staff, and she looked around at their new location.

He waited until he was sure she wasn't going to fall down, before removing the bearskin from Lakshmi and the packs from his shoulders.

They were in an underground hot spring, the room at least twenty degrees warmer than the other one, and filled with clouds of steam. She also noticed that there was only one entrance, as well as multiple shadowy nooks and crannies to hide in. The strong smell of volcanic sulfur meant that the troggs shouldn't be able to smell them, but the real joy was the warm water softly bubbling a few feet away. It promised to take away all the aches and pains, and she had never wanted anything so much in her life as to just sink into that hot water and turn into a prune.

"Want your bath now or later?"

"Now!" She said fervently.

He laughed, and started taking his clothes off. Her eyes widened.

"What are ya doing?"

"I am not ruining my armor in the hot spring. Besides, I'm not sure which one of us smells worse." He slid out of the leather vest, and his hands went to the ties on his pants.

She quickly turned back to stare at the water, blushing and wishing she wasn't.

"Is it my being naked or your being naked that bothers you more?" He asked. "You're not deformed or ugly so it can't be shame. Bad memory?"

"No." She said tersely, wishing he'd change the subject.

"What then? I mean, past the initial embarrassment of someone else knowing that you have adorable dimples on your ass, what harm does it cause?" He folded up the leather armor neatly and set it on top of the packs.

"I don't … wait, what?!" A very small part of her brain squeaked in delight at the compliment, even as the rest of her brain immediately quashed it for taking his flippancy seriously.

"I said what harm does it cause?"

She tried to figure out how to say it without sounding crazy. _Whenever I'm naked, I feel like I'm being stared at, and it makes me nervous and anxious? Other people being naked scares me because it seems like they're staring at me wondering why I'm NOT naked? I don't want people to think I'm something I'm not, to expect things of me, to think I don't care who sees me naked, when I do care. I care a LOT. _"I don't want people looking at me and thinking they're seeing me because I'm not wearing clothes, when everyone knows what trolls are like, and I'm not." She tried.

He knelt down next to her leg and started untying the knots of the linen around her cast. "I hope that made more sense in your head."

She winced as he tugged on a particularly stubborn knot. "Look, everyone knows what trolls are like. It's like night elves all dance naked in moonwells."

"I've only danced in one moonwell, and I was really drunk at the time. Not sure if I was naked or not. What does stereotyping have to do with anything?" His fingers worked at the last knot. She glanced down, staring for a moment at the long white hair trailing down the elegant line of his spine, muscles bunching and smoothing again along his shoulder blades as he undid the last one. She waited until he looked up, before continuing. For some reason she wanted to make sure he saw her face when she tried to explain something so important.

"I don' want people to assume they know what I'm like." She said slowly. "When ya naked, ya invitin' people to look at ya, think about ya in a specific way, and everyone assumes that all trolls welcome that sort of attention. I don't like being looked at by ... strangers."

He studied her face for a moment, before saying quietly, "And everyone else is a stranger." Her jaw dropped. She swallowed, and looked back away from him, his understanding bothering her more than she was willing to admit. "Yes."

"Interesting." He stood up, and stretched, yanking the leather thong holding his hair back out and tossing it over with the rest of his clothes. Her eyes flickered towards his chest for a second before she looked back at the other side of the room. "Post-awkward conversation bath time!" He said cheerfully as he scooped her up, one arm under her thighs, the other around her shoulders before she had a chance to protest and headed into the water. She crossed her arms over her chest out of habit, staring down at her navel.

He waded in until he found a relatively flat rock, and set her down on it. Kinta groaned in pleasure as she sunk into the hot water, though after the first haze of bliss faded, she shifted down a bit until her breasts were completely underwater. As soon as she was seated, he immediately took a few steps away, and sunk happily into the water himself. They didn't speak for long lazy minutes, as they both savored the feeling of the dirt and grime slowly bubbling away. She reached up to start undoing her thick braid of hair, as the heat drew the pain out of aching muscles, and relaxed the tension away.

He lifted his head up from the water just in time to catch a wide dreamy smile of pure sensuous pleasure on her face, as she ran her fingers through her hair, letting the long waves of indigo fall around her shoulders. He stared in surprise. There was nothing coy or come-hither in the look, nothing contrived or deliberate. It was startling and compelling in its honesty and purity of emotion. He had a sudden and powerful urge to kiss the smile, to see what that pleasure tasted like. He took a step towards her before he realized he was moving, and the realization stopped him dead.

She looked up at the sound of his splashing, the smile remaining even as she arched her eyebrows in curiosity. The intense frown on his face made her blink, the smile fading into her usual solemn expression. "What?" She whispered.

"Nothing, just realized I forgot the soap." He turned abruptly, and swam over to the shore. She watched him, confused. His sudden irritation was a sharp contrast to the joking humor he'd usually maintained, and she couldn't tell what caused it. He stalked out of the water, and she stared, unable to help herself. The water had turned his white hair into a silvery curtain that clung to his shoulders and back, and he moved like a wild cat, muscles starkly drawn with a seamless sinuous grace. She felt the same admiration whenever she saw a supreme specimen of wildlife, the admiration she'd felt when she'd first seen Lakshmi running through the jungle after prey. When he bent over to dig in the pack, she mumbled "Dimples."

His ears were sharp, and the acoustics in the cave were excellent. He glanced over his shoulder at her out of the corner of his eye, and caught her staring at him. He suddenly felt his good humor restored, an impish spirit taking hold, as he picked up the soap and turned around, heading back into the water. "What was that?" He asked.

The steam had already darkened her skin, so if she was blushing, he couldn't see it as he swam over towards her rock. "Nothing." She lied.

"Oh. I thought you said dimples." She could see the mocking twist of his mouth, as he grinned at her.

She stiffened and her chin lifted. "I was wondering if ya were joking about the dimples on my ass."

"Adorable dimples, I said."

She cleared her throat. "Well, I can't see myself from the back. Could I have the soap?"

"Given your preference for clothes, I can see why no one has mentioned them to you before, but I can assure you, they're quite adorable." He started lathering the soap between his hands, as he moved to sit next to her on the rock, his thigh touching hers.

"Mm." She didn't know what to say to that. _Thanks, you too, _seemed a little weird given that adorable wasn't the word that sprang to her mind. She shifted over so they were no longer touching.

He held the soap out, and she took it. She flinched in surprise when his hands started washing her hair, though the immediate frisson of enjoyment made her almost go limp. She occasionally paid for the goblin hair shop to cut her hair just so they would wash it. She closed her eyes, trying not to move or react, but his hands were larger than the little goblins, and he was washing more slowly. It felt wonderful.

"I think you've got some cave rat in here. Hand me the soap again." He said. She held up the soap instantly, unwilling to rise to the teasing in case he stopped. He took it and scooped up a handful of hair at the base of her neck to rub soap into. His fingers massaged every inch of her scalp, careful not to pull too hard on the tangles set in days of dirt. She could feel herself melting, even as she sternly told herself to stop it.

As for him, he watched her stoic expression crumble under his ministrations. He watched the slow dawning of that wide smile again even as she fought to try to keep it from showing, listened for the soft whimpering moans whenever he accidentally tugged a snarl or found a particularly sensitive spot, like the ones just behind her ears and at the base of the skull, and smirked whenever she forgot for a moment to breathe.

She'd never thought of washing her hair as a sensual experience to be shared with someone else, but his fingers seemed to leave nerve endings twitching in their wake. She could feel her nipples hardening as he seemed to take an eternity with his task, though she didn't notice the soft sounds she made, or realize that he was watching the expressions on her face with an intense scrutiny. She hoped he didn't realize how very much she was enjoying it.

"All done." He murmured, as he tilted his head to catch the expression on her face. She looked a little dizzy, eyes half closed, and that wide smile in place. It was all the more enticing this time because he'd put it there.

"Hmm?" She said, slow to catch back up to reality. He couldn't help himself. His lips pressed against hers for a brief second, a second in which she responded unthinkingly, her mouth parting under his. Then both his hands on her shoulders dunked her backwards into the water, and started vigorously rinsing the soap out.

Soapy bubbles swirled on the surface as she pushed herself upright again, sputtering.

He reached over to push the hair out of her face, and asked innocently, "Should I wash it again, d'ya think?"

Her eyes went wide, and she blurted out, "No! I mean, it's ok, I think it's clean." If he'd been any more thorough she might have imploded. And did he really kiss her, or had she been in the hot spring long enough to get delirious? It seemed impossible that it really happened, especially given the blank expression on his face.

"If you're sure." He gathered her hair into a makeshift ponytail, and tossed it over her shoulder. "What's your name?"

Her eyes narrowed in suspicious confusion. "Why do ya want to know now?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "We're stuck together for at least another week, more like two, since we still have to get back to civilization after we find a way out of here, and the game is up anyways. You have discovered my clever disguise. Might as well know."

She felt strangely reluctant to tell him all of a sudden, sensing that it could somehow be dangerous. That feeling made no sense. If he wanted to hurt her, he could have just left her to die under the rocks, but her mouth twisted for a moment with hesitation before she said, "Kinta."

He started rubbing soap on her shoulders, working his way down her back to the base of her spine. She didn't make a sound, though her spine stretched up a bit in response. "Whatever. I think I'll call you Kitten. It's always so hard to wash your own back without a scrub brush." He said idly. "It's a shame the front's easier, it's much more entertaining."

"Are ya hinting you want your back washed?" Kinta asked, a strange nervous tension arising as she asked the question, trying not to think about what it would be like to have him washing her front .

"Nice of you to offer!" He promptly handed her the soap, and turned around.

"I didn't exactly …" She stared at his back and shoulders. She suddenly wanted to touch him. The steamy haze made him seem unreal, like a dream. She reached out, her hands shaking, and started rubbing the soap onto his shoulders. Her nails scraped over his shoulder blades, and he groaned. Her hands immediately stopped.

"Did I hurt ya?"

"Not yet. Try a little harder." He hunched forward, "Scratch, Kitten." She started scratching, while he stretched and wriggled and gave directions. "Up. Left. Your other left. Right there. Harder! Mmmm ... there." She scratched until his back was covered with red marks, and he was practically purring.

"Ya look like ya got in a fight with a tiger." She muttered, before she started washing over the welts with the soap, feeling the ridges of muscle and bone under her fingers. She marveled at the feeling of the smoothness of his skin. There was none of the fine body hair that covered the trolls. But the lumps and cords of muscle were as hard as iron, unyielding to her fingers.

"You'd be amazed how similar that is to having sex with a druid." He said, eyes closed as her hands slid down to his lower back.

"If ya say so." Her hands moved back up, exploring and admiring. They roamed down his shoulders to stroke his triceps, circling around to trace his biceps.

"It's not a task for the faint of heart." He paused as her hands slid back up his arms. He was almost positive she didn't realize what she was doing, but the unconscious sensuality of her touch was arousing him to an almost painful level. _This is not a good idea. _He thought.

"I think my back is clean, lady." He said with a grin. "But if you want to wash the other side, I won't argue." He waited for the soap to go flying overhead, and her embarrassed protest.

"All right."

He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder, startled. She lifted her chin, as she fidgeted with the soap nervously. "What?" She said. She was doing her best to keep her face neutral, but she wasn't practiced nearly enough at it. He could see the tension in her lips and in her shoulders.

"You think that's a good idea?" He asked.

"Ya said you weren't g-going to argue." Kinta could feel the panic rising as Eli looked at her with those glowing golden eyes under arched eyebrows, but it seemed like an imp had a hold of her tongue. She felt instinctively that if she backed down and agreed that it wasn't a good idea, that somehow she'd lose, though what exactly she'd lose and who was keeping score wasn't clear. _This isn't a good idea. _She thought.

"And I'd hate for anyone to call me a liar." Eli said, with deep sarcasm. Lying was part of his job description after all. He wasn't going to back down from a frightened virgin a tenth his age who'd found a spare bit of courage in a little pleasurable contact. He was certain a little more pressure would crumble her newly found resolve and allow them to regain the status quo after she backed down. He slid off the rock, letting the soap on his back rinse off, before he grabbed her good leg and lifted it up. He ducked underneath it, and stepped in between her legs. A second later, his hands slid under her butt cheeks, and pulled her forward against him hard, so she was barely resting on the edge of the rock. She clutched onto his shoulders for balance.

"What the hell are ya …?!" She started, before she realized that there was a very distinct part of him pressing against a distinct part of her, and her train of thought derailed into a cliff. She started to automatically retreat, but his arms were locked around her hips, and when she moved, he theatrically moaned. She froze.

"Where did that come from?" She asked stupidly. She could barely think with that rigid flesh pressing so insistently against her, an inch and an angle away from … from something that she couldn't remember why was wrong right now.

"It might have been the sexy noises you were making while I was washing your hair. Or it could have been the way you were washing my back. Both maybe." He murmured. Her body was so close with the way she was clinging to his shoulders that he could feel her breasts pressing against his chest. His hands squeezed her ass, and he forgot that he was only trying to prove a point.

"I wasn't making noises." She managed to get out.

"Soft little moans. Tiny whimpers. Sometimes you'd even squirm a little." He whispered loudly. "You have a sensitive neck."

"I do not."

He leaned forward and kissed her just behind and below the ear. She shuddered. He could feel the shiver all the way down in the places where he was pressing against her. "Do too." He said, his voice huskier than usual. He nibbled at the spot for a second, before kissing his way down to where her neck and shoulder met.

Kinta's fingers dug into his shoulders, as she inhaled sharply. She was trying to make her brain work, but she was lost in wonder at the physical sensations washing her towards utter madness. Was this what all the fuss was about? No wonder everyone thought she was crazy. She was crazy. She was currently squirming naked in the arms of an elf. That was beyond crazy.

He let her weight rest back on the rock as his hands slid down her thighs, before skimming delicately over her ribs to cup her breasts, his thumbs circling her painfully tight nipples. "You have lots of sensitive bits, Kitten."

She tried to remember how to breathe. Surely it wasn't always this hard. When his hands reached her breasts, she groaned raggedly. "Who knew?" She muttered. He was dangerous all right. Anyone that could elicit this sort of madness was definitely dangerous. She understood vaguely now what sort of danger, but she also couldn't make herself care. Her hands slid down his shoulders and his forearms, to his wrists, but instead of pulling them away, which would have been the sane thing to do, she let her hands ride on top of his, as he squeezed and played with her breasts.

Eli was having a difficult time concentrating. It had been a long few days in the cave, and he'd been too busy to relax. It didn't help that she was so responsive to every touch and caress that all he could seem to think of was finding every single spot to make her react. A light pinch of her nipples made her squirm against him and whimper. Each squeeze of those large soft breasts made her groan. He lifted one of her breasts out of the water and ducked his head to suck on it. She cried out loud, her hands coming up to his head to tangle in his hair.

"Shh Kitten, we've barely started." He lifted her other breast to his lips and bit down gently on the nipple. The fine hair on her breasts tickled his lips in a way that was strangely erotic, a constant reminder of her exotic nature.

She clenched her teeth in reaction, but even so a muffled moan escaped. She looked down, watching his fingers, teeth, lips, and tongue play with her breasts. It almost seemed as if they belonged to a stranger, and she was spying on two other people. Slowly his comment penetrated around the way he was savoring every square inch of her breasts. "Barely started?!" She squeaked.

"Mmhmm. Don't be impatient Kitten." He lifted his head to kiss her, cutting off her gasp of pleasure as his thumbs stroked over both nipples again. Her lips parted under his as she kissed him back inexpertly, but somehow that made it sweeter to him. There was nothing practiced or artificial about her returned passion. She wasn't playing games, or pretending to an interest she didn't feel, and to him that was surprisingly intoxicating. Normally sex was just a pleasant but somewhat mechanical exercise with the goal of mutual satisfaction, his partners surprisingly similar and equally forgettable. But he knew that Kinta's reserve wasn't an act, that she was unhappily but genuinely attracted to him. For some reason the combination was utterly irresistible. He didn't want her to be merely satisfied. He didn't want to squander the rare gift, with cursory foreplay and the minimal efforts, whether she'd know the difference or not.

So he kissed her until her lips were swollen and nibbled on her neck and breasts until she was almost crying with frustration and squirming against his dick with an abandon that tore holes in his self-control. Her hands roamed along his shoulders and biceps and back, reveling in exploration.

"Eli!" She said with increasing desperation, her accent thickening. "Eli, please." She couldn't concentrate enough for Common. She begged in Zandali.

"Please what?" He growled. He was barely holding onto what was left of his self-control. He wanted to sink into her, his dick throbbing with the desire to take her. His own breathing was ragged, and he didn't realize his slip as he responded in the same tongue.

"Please f-f-fuck me!" She whispered in Zandali, her voice urgent.

His hands came back down to cup under her thighs, and he lifted her up that crucial inch, the water splashing him in the face as her breasts crested the water. He reached down to adjust the angle, placing the head of his cock right against her opening.

"Yeeeesss!" She wailed, as she felt him start to push into her. She'd never felt anything like it as he slowly worked his way in, the intensity of the feeling making her dizzy. It was a tight fit, each movement of his hips shoving in a little further. His arms tightened around her hips, pulling her down on the last few inches, sending her over the edge when she felt his pubic bone pressing against her clit, realizing dimly that they were fully and intimately joined.

He groaned into her shoulder as she clenched down on him, howling her orgasmic gratification out loud. His fingers dug painfully into her ass cheeks with the effort of not moving so he could savor the sensation of her spasming around him. When she exhaled with inevitable relaxation, he withdrew a little, and then pushed back in. She was so tight and hot that the sensation was mind-blowing. Each slow thrust was delightful, though soon she had loosened up just enough that he could fully slide in and out of her. He didn't speed up though, punishing himself with a long, leisurely ride that was driving him mad. Somewhere behind the red fuzzy thoughts of titillation and passion was the reminder that she was still hurt, that he couldn't just fuck her hard and mercilessly against a handy rock or wall, until they were both screaming with pleasure. _Later_, he promised himself, even as he gritted his teeth when her fingers brushed across his nipples.

Kinta hadn't expected his gentleness. She wasn't ignorant of the mechanics of sex. It was almost impossible to grow up in a troll village and remain completely clueless, but the examples of sex she'd seen had been wild and violent, feral exchanges that drew blood as often as not. She'd been steeling herself for it, willing to pay the price of pain in order to satisfy that burning desire inside of her, hoping that perhaps it wouldn't be too bad. When she realized that it might not be coming, she relaxed, impulsively leaning forward to kiss him.

"Not as bad as you thought, Kitten?" He whispered in Zandali, as she turned her head to the side afterwards, embarrassed by her display of affection. He planted a kiss on her shoulder in silent acknowledgement and approval of the gesture, as he thrust back in as deeply as he could.

"NoOOOOhhh. No, it's … wonderful." She said honestly, even as she felt that strange urgency building again as he kept moving in and out of her, each stroke piling stimulation on exhilaration, until she was whimpering, and then moaning.

He had been holding his own until she started making those noises. For some reason, those wordless cries of arousal that went higher the deeper inside her he was drove him wild. He started moving a little faster, even as he felt his balls tightening. He tried to resist, unwilling to let it end. Then she started whispering to him in Zandali in between her moans and cries, the syllables strange and musical as she told him things she wouldn't have been able to say if she thought he understood them.

"Ya makin' me feel so good… Eli, I can feel ya …. getting harder, feel ya getting bigger! I want, oh I want to feel ya explode inside me. I'm so close … please don't stop!"

He couldn't hold on any longer. He threw his head back as he let go, his orgasm deep and utterly satisfying. Dimly he could hear her own screech of joy, triggered by the sensation of his throbbing deep inside her.

For a few moments they stayed comfortably twined around each other, both limply relaxed in the aftermath. The bubbling and hissing of the hot springs, and Lakshmi's snoring were the only sounds echoing in the chamber, neither one of them willing to break the silence.

Kinta slowly drifted back into reality, staring at the white strands of his hair wrapped around her fingers. As the silence stretched out, she began to get more nervous by the second. What were you supposed to **do** afterwards? Say thank you? Say nothing? Pretend it didn't happen and act blasé? Decide it meant something? Decide it meant nothing? Ask him politely to put her down? Ask him firmly to put her down so as to establish that this wasn't intended to be the first of a series of repeat performances? (Did she _want_ a repeat performance?) Would that be offensive or even smart given she was sort of dependent upon his care? Was there a socially acceptable time limit before one asked the member of the enemy faction to kindly remove his dick from inside one?

Eli wasn't bothering with complex thoughts aside from a brief and unrepentant _~Well, fuck.~_ He was allowing himself the rare chance to drift along in the haze of contentment, when he noticed Kinta's spine stiffening in his arms and felt her fingers twining nervously behind his back. _~Oh right. Nervous post-sex jitters. I hate those.~ _He sifted through the options that came to mind, before deciding on the most annoying but safest one.

He dramatically sighed in a way that indicated satisfaction, which made her turn her head to look at him, startled by the sudden sound. He kissed her quickly, a hard peck on the lips, before sliding her back and sitting her on her rock in one fast smooth motion. "Whatever did you do with the soap?" He asked absently in Common, turning to look around for it, carefully not facing her.

She stared at him in shocked silence, unable to pick between anger at his casual dismissal of something that had shattered her so completely, and relief at his casual dismissal of something that had shattered her so completely. Questions and comments surged and died on her lips, before she managed in Common, "I don't know." Something was niggling at the back of her mind, something important that she should have noticed.

"Mmph. Ah, there it is!" He splashed over towards the merrily bobbing soap which had escaped and floated off to the back of the pool. He rescued the soap, and swam back over. He held it out to her, "Want to finish up first?"

"It is my damn soap." She had had time to decide that the best response was none at all. No embarrassing conversations, no emotional chinks to be taken advantage of. She was technically on a mission, and compromising it by allowing an enemy spy to manipulate her emotions would be traitorous. The problem wasn't the ... the physical aspect. It was whether or not it affected what she had been sent to do that could be bad. As long as she kept telling herself that, she could manage to not freak out. So she'd managed a level tone, and even if she was flushed, it was perfectly understandable given the steam and … other things. No signs, no tracks. Perfectly composed.

"Point." He admitted, and tossed it over to her. She caught it easily in one hand. He leaned back to float in the water, resuming the hazy relaxation he rarely got to enjoy after sex. Usually he had to go find his pants and make a graceful exit quickly, especially if someone's husband was coming up the stairs.

She didn't look at him as she finished washing all the bits. She managed not to let her face change when her fingers trailed across any of the spots he'd left sensitive or lightly bruised. She gave herself an A for effort, as she pitched the soap casually right into his midsection, when she was done.

He gave her a B+ for effort. Her nostrils flared whenever the soap went across a sensitive spot or any of the spots he'd been careless enough to mark. And she kept glancing over his direction in what she thought was a subtle way to make sure he wasn't watching. He even saw the soap coming but let it hit him, making a grunt as if in surprise.

"Oof! Thanks." He said with a sarcastic tone, even as he grabbed the soap, and started soaping himself up quickly.

"Don' mention it." She said with a cheerful tone. She felt decent for the first time in days. She was clean, she was relaxed, and while there was still the ache in her ribs and leg, they didn't seem quite so bad now. She could handle this. It wasn't so difficult after all. The trick was not to think about it. She leaned back deeper into the water until only her face was above the water level, and closed her eyes.

He snuck back over after he finished washing, and tapped her on the nose. "Ready to get out?" He asked when she opened her eyes to look at him. She sighed, and sat up, reluctance in every move. "I suppose. " He nodded and scooped her up, heading for the shore. She managed not to flinch and cover herself up when they left the water, though when she noticed the marks on her breasts, she had to look away quickly.

He set her down on the bearskin after spreading it out with a foot. He then went digging through one of the packs. She snuck another glance at him out of the corner of her eye, admiring the definition in his legs and shoulders with what she assured herself was purely aesthetic appreciation. He pulled out what looked like his old linen robe, except that it was now four feet shorter, the edge ragged.

"This is all that's left of normal clothes. I used the rest of it for bandages and … hygiene." He said. "Your armor popped about thirty rivets from the crush, and all of the buckles and straps are shot, along with several impressive holes. I had to cut a couple more to get you out. You're going to need a blacksmith to repair it before you can wear it." His tone of voice was clinical. "We might be able to reuse the bit of linen that was your sling to create some sort of underwear, but it's not going to be very useful in terms of modesty."

She glanced at the thin linen robe, before holding a hand out for it, saying only "Better than nothing." He tossed it over to her. She pulled it on, but it barely made it to her hips. Still, she felt a little more secure as she belted it tightly.

He picked up his loincloth and walked back to the water's edge. He could feel her watching him as he washed the cloth out, and her silence was simultaneously reassuring, and disturbing. He couldn't think of a single female he'd ever been acquainted with that would have managed to stay quiet this long, all things considered. Most would have tried to start a conversation by now, proffering some gambit to try and figure out how he REALLY felt. He always found it irritating because for the most part, he didn't really ever feel much of anything besides a mild satisfaction at having indulged in a biological need. He had a whole host of convincing lies about how deeply meaningful the experience was, and how sorry he was that his profession meant that he couldn't pursue something more long-term. Sometimes, if they cried, he'd remember to send flowers a week later with a note saying something like "Thanks for the memory." He never made promises for anything more, and the ones who slept with him anyways were the ones who had decided to hope that they could change his mind or figured they could guilt trip him into a relationship. He couldn't help but feel that both types didn't really deserve his solicitation.

He glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see she wasn't looking at him. Instead she had moved down the bearskin to reach the bits of her bow and the bandages, and was re-building the splint with a look of concentration.

"I was getting around to that." He said, feeling almost as if her actions were a silent rebuke.

"I'm wounded, not helpless." She said in an absent tone, as she pulled a knot tight. He didn't respond. She whistled, waking Lakshmi who sidled over obediently, yawning. Kinta pulled herself to one knee, and unbuckled Lakshmi's harness, pulling it off into her lap. A snap of her fingers, and a gesture sent the raptor bouncing past Eli to splash around in the water vigorously.

He walked back to the skin, and dropped down next to her, leaving his underwear on a handy rock to dry. "I don't think helpless is a word I would use to describe you, Kitten." He said cheerfully in Common. He felt rather good himself, as he closed his eyes.

She smiled that quick brief smile of hers at that, before reaching up to start finger-combing her wet hair, trying to get the tangles out. "I tell ya what a good word would be." She said. Her eyes narrowed as he didn't respond, looking like he wanted to go to sleep. She leaned over and squeezed some of the water out of her hair and onto his stomach. He made a grumbling noise in protest, before opening his eyes to look at her reproachfully. "I can think of plenty, but which one were you going to pick?"

"Hungry." said Kinta, ignoring the urge to ask him which ones he was thinking of. "Which pack has food in it?" Her eyes kept trying to sneak peeks at that most interesting part of his anatomy, and she had to keep making herself focus on the harness in her lap.

"Are you always this subtle?" He rolled over, and got to his feet, before heading over to the packs in question. He grabbed one, and brought it back over to the blanket, setting it in his lap as he sat down cross-legged. Kinta was a little relieved at having the temptation to look hidden from view. He reached in and pulled out a half-loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, a bottle of melon juice, and a big green-leaf package she knew contained smoked fish. Her stomach growled. He laughed.

"Help yourself. I'm not hungry yet." He said, moving the pack to the side, and laying down again, determined to snag a brief nap in order to catch up some on the sleeplessness of the past few days when he'd been the only one really capable of keeping watch. The raptor had done fairly well, but got distracted easily since he wasn't her master, and he'd only been able to catch a couple hours here and there. He closed his eyes, and was completely out a few moments later, a bemused thought crossing his mind before sleep took over. _Lot of trust in a troll. Sleeping naked and unarmed next to her. Your teachers would skin you alive if you were still in training. _

Kinta forced herself to eat slowly. A bite of bread. Wait. A bite of cheese. Wait. A drink of juice. She felt like she hadn't eaten in days, and she hadn't asked Eli what he'd fed her. The last thing she wanted to do with broken ribs was start throwing up. She took a few moments to braid her hair tightly. She felt a little more like herself after doing that little chore, though now that she had time to think without the elf's far-too-perceptive golden eyes glowing at her in the dark, she didn't want to.

She glanced down at him as his breathing slowed and deepened. He really was asleep. She realized guiltily that he'd probably not been able to sleep much the last few days, if at all. Seeing him asleep and vulnerable next to her made her feel strangely hot and uncomfortable.

She still wasn't sure what had happened. Had he set out to seduce her on purpose? Was he just trying to help by washing her hair? Were elves just that much more touchy-feely? The previous two weeks, he hadn't offered to wash her back or hair, so that didn't seem like it could be it. Had she been so ready for sex that the unforgettable sensation of his hard length pressing against her had crumbled all the inhibitions she had been harboring so long? She'd wanted it so badly the instant she'd felt his dick start pressing her folds apart. She hadn't ever felt that sort of desperate need before, and it scared her. Was it because of their situation, or ... was it because of him? Was she some sort of pervert who got off on fucking the enemy, or was it just the enforced close contact of the last two days? Was it some sort of survival reaction to not being dead? Would anyone or anything have done?

Her fingers came up of their own accord and brushed the spot where his lips had first gone, on that part of her neck behind and below her ear. He'd known right where to touch her. Well, that wasn't that surprising. Spies and assasins were trained in anatomy, trained in reading people. What if this whole episode would be featured as a light-hearted note in his report? The image of several elves sitting around reading the report and laughing swam in front of her eyes. What kind of seven kinds of fool was she? She gripped her forehead between her hands, as the old familiar panic rose up again. That throat-closing feeling, the thumping sound of the blood pounding in her veins painful and too fast. It had been so long since she'd had an attack, but she was so tired, and then all the emotional upheaval had left her self-control in tatters. She was breathing too quickly, and now Lakshmi was nosing at her, and chuffing worriedly. She grabbed onto the scaly snout and rested her forehead against it, dragging in painful breaths, holding them against the urge to blow them out too fast, then releasing them in slow ragged wisps.

Long minutes passed before she could push the sounds of laughter and the images of the laughing elves, centering around a callously smirking Eli out of her head. She stroked Lakshmi's warm neck gently, murmuring in Zandali, "Don't be listening to that voodoo. Ya don't know what'll happen. Mebbe he won't want tell the elvies either. Be embarrassing, or mebbe they don' care. Either way, he been takin' care of ya, ain't been hurtin' ya. What kinda person assumes the worst all the time?"

"The kind with good survival instincts." Eli muttered, still half asleep.

He was woken up a second later by a fist landing in his ribs. "OW! What the hell was that for lady? I'm trying to sleep!"

"You speak Zandali!" She accused. "I knew something was bugging me. You spoke Zandali when … before!"

He swore in Thalassian, before sitting up. What was wrong with him? He was never this sloppy. This entire mission was turning into a disaster. "Yeah. That's why they chose to send me."

"You could have said something! You understood … things I wouldn't have said if I thought you'd understood." She could feel the hysteria returning, rising up in waves worse than before.

"I don't remember you saying anything you'd need to be ashamed of." He said seriously, laying back down. "People always say things in the throes of passion that they don't really mean. Only a fool takes any of them seriously. Can I go back to sleep now? Please?"

She made a disparaging noise, feeling much better suddenly. He probably didn't want to report on the 'liaison' either. "Go on then, lazy bones."

He made a grumbling noise of irritation in response before letting himself sink back into sleep, leaving her to watch over the silent steamy room .


	4. Chapter 4

A sharp whistling sound woke him, followed by a thump and the final sounds of death, a throat rattle, and the scrabble of soon-to-be lifeless limbs against the stone floor.

_Sling. Blunt instrument, weapon of last resort due to wind-up time and warning sound, as well as unreliable damage. _His brain reported automatically, even as he sat straight up, arms flexing to release the fist-weapons that he'd taken off, and his eyes searched for the reason for the sling.

"Relax elf. Was just one trogg," said Kinta in Zandali, as she set the sling back down. She'd made a few decisions while he'd been sleeping. One, she'd stop trying to bother with the clunky syllables of Common. Two, she wasn't ever gonna admit to having slept with the elf, and if he said she did, she'd call him a liar. Three, it was absolutely not happening again, no matter how much her nether regions whined. Too much was at stake.

Lakshmi dragged the trogg corpse over to Kinta's side. Eli lifted his eyebrows as the troll checked the body briefly before Lakshmi dragged it to a pile of four or five trogg bodies.

"How long was I asleep?"

"I didn't bring a gobbo watch, mon. I guess a few hours." She picked up a pile of linen scraps that he suspected came from the troggs and a rough bone needle.

"Eli, I want ya ta promise me somethin'." She said, not looking up from her sewing.

_Oh Gods, here it comes. _He thought. He should have known that you can't sleep with any female without having to 'talk' afterwards. At least he got a nap. He'd been more tired than he thought.

"Depends on what you want." He said, cautiously.

"If I don' make it outta the cave, ya gotta promise me ta take the letter from Vol'jin ta the head druid. It's important. It's in a secret pocket in Lakshmi's harness."

He blinked. Strangely, it hadn't occurred to him to search the raptor. Well, where else would a hunter put something they absolutely didn't want to lose? "What's so important that it couldn't go through the usual channels?"

"I don't know. They didn't bother tellin' me. Vol'jin wanted ta be sure that the message couldn't be dismissed as a trick or a lie. So he sent a hostage as proof of good faith and the message bein' real an' to bring back any response." She lifted a shoulder. "Maybe I won't make it out of the cave, with this busted leg. Don't expect ya ta die under a pile of troggs for a troll when ya can still outrun the damn things. But the message be important. Ya can swear this be what I told ya."

_I didn't expect a troll to die under a pile of rocks for an elf. _His jaw clenched, and a muscle jumped. "I'll make sure the message gets through." He said. He could at least promise her that, though the idea of leaving her to die alone in the dark under hundreds of grasping dirty paws offended him greatly.

Something else was bothering him. "They didn't tell you what the message was? They sent you off on a suicide mission without telling you why?"

She kept sewing, the dipping of the needle rhythmic. "They told me it was important to the clan. Ain't enough Darkspear to waste on stupid errands, so it was important. Also, I ain't …" She stopped, and could feel those golden eyes swing back to her, before she hurriedly continued. "Ain't busy at the moment. Lots of us off on battlefronts, or rebuilding."

"That's not what you were going to say." He said.

"Dunno whatcha mean."

"You ain't what?"

"Ain't busy." She said flatly. Lakshmi shook her head, fluffing out the feathers on her harness, and hooted. "Shut up Lakshmi."

"Even your raptor knows when you lie. You're really bad at it." He said.

"Shut up, elfie." Her shoulders had gotten tight, and her lips were pulled into a thin line.

He stood up, and went over to get his now-dry loincloth. As he stepped into it, he could almost hear her relax. He thought briefly about letting her win that battle. But only briefly. He continued getting dressed, though his nose wrinkled at the smell of his leathers. He checked all his weapons automatically, but his mind was picking out a plan of attack.

She finished off the seam, and bit the thread with her teeth. She held up a pair of pants, checking them over for holes. They looked wearable just as soon as she twisted up a drawstring. And washed them.

Eli went over to the dead troggs and rifled through the corpses. He found a few gold pieces, some crappy knives, and one staff that was warped. He held it up, looking at it critically for a second, before saying, "Hey do you think that …"

"Won't work for a bow." said Kinta, as she pushed herself up to standing with Lakshmi's help. "Wood's too weak. It'd splinter first draw."

He squinted, surprised she'd figured out what he was going to say so quickly, and sighed as she started a slow hop to the water to wash her new creation. A few seconds later, she squeaked in surprise as he scooped her up and carried her to the water's edge, and sat her down.

"Next time, ask for help. The less you stress that injury, the faster it'll heal." He said, irritably. "We're both stuck here until it does, so quit being stubborn."

"You're not stuck here." She said, angrily. "That's why I asked ya ta make sure that message gets delivered. And you make sure Lakshmi gets out of the cave too. Ya don't owe me nothin' elf, 'sides those two things."

"Now look who's not using proper names. And I do owe you something. If you hadn't pulled me into the cave, I'd be elf-goo under 30 tons of rock."

She blinked. "I forgot about that."

"Well, you've been a bit distracted." He sat down behind her comfortably, sliding his legs down alongside hers, so that she was effectively sitting in between his legs. He ignored the sudden stiffening of her spine. "But it sort of stuck in my mind."

She leaned forward away from him to start washing the pants, trying to ignore the feeling of his hard thighs pressing around hers. "Yeah well, ya took care of me while I was indisposed." She muttered. "So we're even." She inhaled a lungful of resolution before saying in a calm-but-firm tone. "And there's lotsa places ta sit, so you don't have to sit right behind me."

"I know," he said, leaning forward so that his husky voice was a whisper tickling her ear. "But if I sit here, I can enjoy the feeling of your delightfully dimpled ass wiggling against my …"

"Fine, sit wherever you like!" She said so quickly it came out in one breath. "An' I don't wanna talk about … feelings."

"Ok." He said agreeably. "Then let's talk about what you ain't."

"I don't wanna talk about that either." She said, pounding on the linen with a handy rock.

"Weeeellll, those are the only two things I want to talk about. But you can pick which one." And to emphasize his point, he leaned in to stroke one of the sensitive spots along her neck.

"That's blackmail!" She shivered as his finger traced along her nape. "Quit it."

"Yes it is, and no."

"That ain't polite."

"Assassin." He reminded her. "So which is it?"

"Ya a stubborn jerk. I ain't talkin' to you at all."

"Oh that's fine. I love the sound of my own voice. Really, talking dirty is almost a form of masturbation, since the brain is the largest erogenous organ." He snitched the hair tie off the end of her braid, and started unraveling it. She stopped breathing the second his fingers reached her scalp. He smirked, and ground his hips against her backside, "Well, maybe the second largest."

She exhaled hard, but managed to keep her jaw clamped tight. He was just trying to goad her, and she wasn't going to give in. No matter how good his fingers felt tracing down her scalp. She said she wasn't talking to him, and she wasn't. Absolutely not. Somebody was making soft little whimpering noises. Oh loa, was that her?!

"See, you like the way it feels too. Otherwise you wouldn't be making those sexy little sounds that make me want to rip the rest of your robe off and get you thoroughly dirty so I can take another bath with you where you beg me to …"

"FINE! I ain't attached!" She shrieked, trying to catch his hands and get them away from the sensitive spots he was making tingle. He grinned, and as her hands clasped behind her head trying to catch his, he caught both wrists in one hand, and quickly looped her now-repurposed hair-tie around them, and knotted it.

"What the hell ya doin', ya crazy elf?!" She demanded as she tried to bring her hands back around, but he'd grabbed her sling, and looped it through the belt of the robe and the makeshift binding, so that she was stuck.

"Interrogation technique number 314."

"What?!"

"Kidding."

"Well then untie me!"

"We don't number them. That would just be silly. Now what do you mean you aren't attached? What does it matter if you're dating if you're competent?"

She turned her head enough to glare at him out of the corner of one eye. He turned her head back forward again absently, and kissed her behind the ear. She squirmed.

"Your choice, Kitten, conversation or kisses, and there's a lot more options for kisses now that you're tied up and can't scratch."

She sighed. It's not like it was something treasonous. Just embarrassing, and at this rate, there wasn't much left she could be embarrassed about. And kisses were definitely too dangerous. "Look, there ain't many Darkspear. We all got a duty to our clan to … to pop out little ones. Everyone helps raise 'em so no one gotta choose between a family or a career. Most troll women when they come of age, spawn one or two while they finish training, and then go off into the world. Clan raises the kids so we don't get all caught up in family. Kids are the way ya attach ta ya clan."

He started rubbing her shoulders. "Well that's not surprising given your shyness issues. I wasn't your first though." He said it matter-of-factly, obviously intending it to be reassuring.

Between the massage and the fact she wasn't looking at him, she managed to take it that way. "Well no. Sort of. No." She muttered.

"What do you mean sort of?" He reached up and untied her hands, and she let them drop back into her lap, almost without noticing. He kept rubbing her shoulders, though.

"Well, there was one troll. He was really handsome, and a nice guy. I managed to talk to him twice, so I got drunk off my raptor at the next village celebration." She exhaled through her nose, and propped her chin up on her hand. "He told me to come back sober, and he'd love to … anyways."

"Sounds like a nice guy." said Eli, with surprise.

"No, that's how a troll politely blows someone off. I was so embarrassed when I got sober, I just left the village."

"He might have just been worried you were so drunk you'd get sick on him during sex. It might not have been a personal rejection, you know."

"I know, but what kind of nut needs to get really drunk ta have sex in a village full of people having sex? I'd just have to explain that I got drunk on purpose so I wouldn't throw up on him out of nerves."

"Maybe that's the problem."

"What are you talking about?"

"A whole village of people having sex is a lot of pressure. Also, it's overkill if you're sensitive to small nuance, like you are."

"I ain't sensitive to nuance."

"Oh? You noticed the elementals moving into a pattern before I did. You sensed those troggs coming into the cave when they were thirty yards away. The smallest changes in your environment bother you. You read the smallest facial expressions so clearly that you're sensing things other people aren't aware of transmitting. Speaking from experience you're also extremely sensitive to being touched. Usually that takes a lot of training. Most people would have to take sandpaper to their nerves to get it. You don't have that protective coating most people come with. It's no wonder you shy away from the assault of everyday life." It was the absent clinical tone of his voice that made it the hardest to take.

"I'm a hunter, of course I pay attention to what's going on around me!" She snarled, angry at his suggestion, angry at his assumption that he could figure out what had gone wrong with her whole life.

"I've met a lot of hunters. I don't find it hard to sneak up on them. It took me ten minutes to sneak up on you during your bath, because you kept cocking your head towards me every time I moved, and I knew I wasn't being noisier than usual." He said, sliding over to sit next to her instead. "Why are you so angry?"

"You're saying I'm broken! I'm not just weird, I'm broken." It was amazing how crushed she felt, not only to find out that she was broken, that it was apparently obvious to everyone, even non-trolls. If an elf had picked this up, what did her people think? She'd always hoped that maybe it was just immaturity, that she'd grow out of it eventually, that it would fix itself, and she'd be normal someday. If the elf was right, her problem was built in deep. The kind that didn't fix itself.

"No, I'm not. I'm saying you're more sensitive than most trolls, and that's why you have anxiety attacks. Trolls are a brash, noisy people not usually given to analyzing subtlety. If maybe you'd talked your friend into going out into the woods with you, away from the noise and drums, and smells, and smoke, you'd have been able to relax."

"Or into a dark cave maybe." She couldn't have been that much of a fool, could she?

He pursed his lips. "That would probably also have worked."

"It did work." She pulled the unbroken leg up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around it, as if that would somehow put the bottom back into her world. How come she hadn't realized what was wrong with her? How come the witch doctors and the priestesses she'd gone to for help hadn't realized it? How come the only being on the whole stupid continent who figured out what was wrong with her was one of the elf assassins?

"You make it sound like I planned a cave-in just so I could have my wicked, wicked way with you." He muttered. "Don't get me wrong, the sex was good, but not risk-my-life-and-almost-die-good." He sat, waiting for the inevitable questions and awkward conversation that would include fishing for compliments and reassurance that always irritated him.

She lifted her head, as that realization hit. She stared down at the water, roiling and bubbling like the questions in her brain. _Well, then why did he seduce me? The short answer is he wanted to. Why get more complicated than that? I was naked and he felt that was attractive. I felt he was attractive so he could feel the same I guess. How did he figure out what was wrong with me? Well, he's a trained observer, and he's spent the last six weeks focused on figuring me out. I don't travel with other people, and I never stayed more than a few days in the village at a time. He's the first person who's had the opportunity to figure me out. I should be grateful he told me._

The longer she stayed quiet, the more twitchy he got. This was going to be bad. She was going to burst into tears any minute now. She'd turn to him with glistening eyes and ask why he slept with her then, if it was only 'good', and then demand details on what made it 'good' versus 'fantastic' and why wasn't it earth-shattering for him too. As if every time he stuck his dick into someone it woke up Ragnaros.

"You're right. I'm sorry. I ain't mad at you. I just always wondered what was wrong with me, and findin' out is a bit shocking." She said. "I'm glad ya told me."

"Look, it's not that it wasn't good, it's th… Wait, what?" He'd started off with the usual line, before realizing that the conversation had detoured off the rails.

"What *are* you talking about?" She asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.

"What are *you* talking about?" He asked.

"I was sayin' sorry for bein' mad at you. It surprised me is all, finding out what's wrong with me."

"I didn't say anything was wrong with you." He said, still trying to play catch-up. "The sex was good. Very good."

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Who was talkin' about sex? I mean, yeah, it was ok, but I was sayin' sorry for being mad at you."

He frowned. "What do you mean it was ok?"

"Well, I ain't got a lot of comparisons, but I felt good afterwards. So that means it was good, I guess, right?" Kinta said, now confused as to why they were talking about it. She'd decided they weren't talking about it, and he hadn't brought it up before. And why was he frowning at her?

"You seemed to be enjoying yourself during. It looked a little better than good to me, but maybe you're easy to please." He accused.

"Do we have to talk about this? We both said it was good. What's the problem?" She said, defensively.

"I usually get more compliments from my lovers." He grumbled.

"Well, what do you want me to say?" She asked.

"I shouldn't have to tell you what to say." He groused. "If I have to tell you what to say, then you obviously don't mean it."

She rolled her eyes. "Look, Eli, ya a nice elf. But sometimes ya a bit emo. I was tryin' to say thank you, not bring up what happened. I gonna go swim some." She slipped into the water and swam off.

Eli sat there, going over the conversation in his head, before he turned to the raptor, and asked, "What the hell just happened?"

Lakshmi just chuffed at him, a noise he suspected was laughter.


	5. Chapter 5

They stayed in the steamy room two more sleeps, before the food supplies indicated they needed to try and get out of the cave. Eli had spent most of those two days exploring and mapping out the tunnels to try and find the best way out. Kinta had managed to turn the cheap staff and Eli's old fake staff into a pair of crutches, and finished a full set of clothes from the linen scraps they'd salvaged.

He'd came back late the second night, and fell down next to her, exhausted. "Got a present for you." He muttered, after drinking nearly half a skin of water.

"A bow?"

"Better." He held up a broken twig that still had green leaves on it.

"Ya found the way out!"

"Yeah. There's only twenty-three problems with it. And the hole I grabbed this through will need to be dug out enough to let your raptor out. I'm not entirely sure I could get all the way through it. without some digging."

"How long a walk?" She asked.

"I got straight there, so cut the time I was gone in half."

She handed him the last of the bread and fish. "None of those twenty-three problems happened to have a bow and arrow, did they?"

"Not a weapon good for cave-dwellers. I've got a plan though." He took the bread and fish and tore into it hungrily. The trek to the way out was more treacherous than he'd been willing to admit. There was one climb in particular he wasn't sure Kinta would be able to tackle, but time wasn't on their side.

"What?"

"I found some deathcap mushrooms. I think I can poison the troggs' food stores, enough to incapacitate them long enough for us to get past."

Kinta made a face. "I hate the idea of killin' off an entire den of wild things. There might be pups."

"I wouldn't worry. Troggs breed like rabbits. Taking out a single camp of them won't have that much impact." He stretched, rubbing at the shoulder he nearly jerked out of socket on a bad wall-climb.

"What'd ya do to your shoulder?" She asked.

"Missed a hand-hold, and dropped all my weight on it when I wasn't ready for it." He confessed. "It'll be fine in the morning."

She didn't say anything for a moment, "One more sleep then."

"Sorry Kitten. We've only got one more day of food and water. How are the ribs?"

"I think they've repaired. It don't hurt when I take a deep breath any longer. It's just the leg now."

"If you weren't a troll, I'd have amputated it, lady. It was smashed."

The careful cordiality that had been the atmosphere between them for the last two days had grown stale and painful, even as the conversation ground down to a halt.

He had almost fallen asleep when she said, "Eli?"

"Hmmm?"

"I can't sleep. Carry me into the water?" There was a hesitant tone in her voice that woke him up far more than the question had.

"Sure Kitten, give me a minute." He stood up and started taking off his leathers. Something made him glance over his shoulder, to catch her staring at him as he took his clothes off.

_Oh._ He thought, his mood instantly improved.

She stared at the lines of bone and muscle, wondering how she'd managed not to notice the curve of his spine before the cave. And she knew what he wasn't saying. The trek through the caves was going to be hard, if not impossible with a broken leg. He hadn't told her that she could ride Lakshmi, because the path was not going to be the kind she could ride though. She probably wasn't going to make it. But the farther she got, the closer Lakshmi would be to getting out.

He scooped her up in his arms and waded into the water.

At least she could have this.

He carried her out to the flat rock he'd put her on before. Her arms locked around his neck as he set her down.

"Stay with me." She said huskily, before kissing him in the little hollow where the collarbone met the shoulder.

"All right." He said and was rewarded with that wide, slow smile that stirred him so deeply. She reached up and started unbraiding her hair. He watched intently as she combed the last of the plait out of the dark blue masses with her fingers. She reached down to untie the knot of the robe, letting it fall open. He leaned forward, and pulled it off her shoulders, so that her breasts bounced free, buoyant in the bubbly water.

She held her arms open wide, and he moved forward in between her legs, sliding her good leg up over his hip. His hands roamed up her thighs, around to her buttocks, before sliding up her ribs.

"Definitely healed up." He murmured, before leaning in to kiss that odd smile. She returned the kiss, leaning in, before her hands on his chest pushed him away. He looked down at her quizzically, but then her hands started roaming across his pectoral muscles.

"I just want to look for a moment." She admitted. "Ya may have not been entirely bragging about your proportions."

He promptly posed, flexing his muscles the way he had back at the stream in what seemed like an eternity ago.

"Now ya ruin it." She reached up to tweak his nipple, teasing. She was unprepared for him to grit his teeth and hiss in reaction.

"Really?" She said, interested, as she reached out to tweak the other one. This time he groaned. 'I'm startin' to think you got sensitive bits too, Eli."

"Did you think you had a monopoly?" He grinned at her, as her hands started exploring over his body, tracing the musculature along his abs, back up to his pectoral muscles, along the collarbones to his shoulders.

"For now, I do." She slid her hands down his ribs, and traced the hollows around his hipbones. "Unless elves are so unpicky that troggs look sexy."

"If you'd like to know about a really sensitive bit, it's the one sticking up in the middle there." He offered helpfully. "And no one's that horny. Except maybe a troll." The gentle tickling of her fingers was energizing all the nerve endings under his skin. Something about the rougher texture of her skin and the larger size of her fingers resonated with the fibers of his being.

She ran the tip of a fingernail along the underside of his shaft. "Ya ask me to play with your little Eli, and insult me in the same sentence? Ain't ya got any self-preservational instincts?"

He groaned appreciatively. "Not if you keep doing that."

She laughed, a low gurgling breathy giggle that made his dick throb. She reached up and stroked both his nipples before leaning forward to lick him. His amber eyes glittered in the dark. A low growling rumble came from his throat, and he yanked her tight against him, diving in to kiss her deeply before nibbling that sensitive spot below her ear.

She howled in pleasure. She dug her nails in his back, leaving bloody furrows as she hung onto him for dear life. He feasted on her breasts, sucking and nibbling them until even the touch of the water on her nipples was almost too much to bear. One of his hands tangled itself in her hair, and pulled her head back roughly, so he could kiss her again, while his other hand was moving in between her legs. The pad of his thumb tormented her clit, while his fingers teased all the tender flesh around her opening, without going in. She squirmed and ground against him, panting and moaning half-words and phrases of pleading and encouragement.

He heard none of them. She was so much warmer than the night elves that he felt like he was embracing an inferno, the holes left by her fingernails burning where the fire of her touch snuck into his veins and inflamed his mind. When his lips were occupied elsewhere, her teeth were leaving marks where her kisses lingered. When her hands were free, she tormented his nipples, his dick, his balls, squeezing his ass, spurring him further into madness.

He shoved her pants down roughly and drove into her. She wrapped her good leg around his hips, and her arms around his neck. He whispered obscenities and compliments in Common, Thalassian, and Zandali; the hand he had knotted in her hair pressed her in close so that her breasts mashed against his chest, and her head rested on his shoulder so that every cry and whimper would squirm their way into his ear. He lifted her up off the rock, his other arm under her buttocks, so that she was supported only by him, gravity adding its own force to his thrusts.

He was dimly aware of her screaming in joy even as his own orgasm hit like one of the War Ancients, taking away every single bit of energy he had left. He sagged back into the water, one of his last thoughts to make sure she was set safely on the rock.

She dragged him up out of the water, holding his head upon her lap, and letting the buoyancy of the spring do the rest of the work, as the lassitude of exhaustion overtook her. She slowly combed out his hair with her fingers, the silvery wave rippling over her thighs.

Eventually he muttered, "Illidan's wings, Kitten."

"That was …** very** good." The hesitation had been full of so much more that she'd wanted to say. But in the quiet moments while he recovered, she'd ruthlessly edited all of them. Things that could not be said to someone she'd likely never see again if they made it out. Things she would not say, in case they made him hesitate when she could no longer go on. But she wanted him to know that she wanted to say something.

He snorted. "If I didn't know your sample size was so small, I think I'd be insulted."

"I suppose it was unfair, after you spent all day walking." She murmured. "But I ain't sorry."

"Some moments in life are worth a little inconvenience."

Eventually they dragged themselves back out to the bearskin, where they both fell asleep.

When they woke up the next day, neither one of them mentioned the night before, but this time, instead of awkward politeness, there was a silent determination. They didn't speak because they didn't need to. She loaded up the ammo bag she'd made with rocks for her sling. He checked all of his knives, and the linen rope she'd braided.

Just before they headed out, she said, "Remember, you promised. Lakshmi, and the letter."

He stared at her for a long moment, face unreadable, before he nodded.

Progress was even slower than he'd feared. Kinta was doing her best, but the floor of the cave was treacherous. Gravel patches sent her crutches flying out from underneath her more than once. Damp moss-covered stones were like ice in the darkness. Whenever a long smooth patch came up, he'd have her ride on Lakshmi, and they'd move at reasonable speed, but those patches were too few and far between. He'd carry her up or down the ravines on his back, but a full-grown troll was a sizeable burden, and he could feel his shoulders starting to ache. Especially the one he'd injured the day before.

When she slipped and fell for the third time, they stopped to rest. Tears had turned into muddy trails on her face, and she was breathing hard, waiting for the throbbing to die down a little. "What I wouldn't give for a healing potion…" she muttered through gritted teeth.

"I'm hoping there might be something in the trogg camp." He said, calmly. "We're making decent time for someone with a broken leg."

"We're making terrible time." She muttered. "The broken leg is just an excuse for it." She inhaled. "Tell me what's coming. I need to count it off in my head."

"Two more lefts, second tunnel on the right, a downhill slope you can ride Lakshmi on, a low tunnel, and then two rights, and we're at the trogg camp." He said, before reluctantly adding, "I'm considering altering course. There's an underground spring off the other side of the slope. It's out of the way, but it's a shorter distance from this point. I think you can make it there, and I'll go on alone to hit the trogg camp."

She inhaled sharply. Was this where Eli left her alone in the darkness? Was there anything she could do if it was? "Why ya considering it?" She hoped her voice sounded calm, and not as panicky as she felt.

Eli sighed. "Because I'm not sure if you can make one of the climbs ahead. We haven't hit the bad ones yet. And perhaps if I can liberate some of the trogg food stores, we can hole up there for a couple days and see if your leg gets better." He reached up to rub his injured shoulder. "Truthfully, I'm not sure I can make that last climb."

Kinta frowned. "That'd involve you sneaking into the entire trogg camp and fishing through their stuff, instead of a quick dose and go. If it goes wrong, you're goo."

Eli rolled his shoulders, a quick grimace crossing his features when the motion stopped short in revolt and a shooting pain of reproach. He'd almost dislocated it on that fall, and the strain was worse than he'd thought. "The other option is trying to fight our way through the camp, and resting up there." He said sarcastically.

Kinta scratched Lakshmi's neck. "Sounds like a better option. If we take it slow and sneaky, with Lakshmi keeping attention while you do your stabbin' and I'll fling rocks."

Eli paused, "That's insane."

"It's the most direct route. It's also a source of food and possible shelter, and if we're careful, we won't get all twenty-three at once. There might even be another route out by the camp. They normally build a tunnel to the surface, don't they? For air an' their raids?"

Eli pinched the bridge of his nose, and stared off into the darkness, considering the idea. "It's still insane. But if we take it slow…"

"'Atta boy elfy. Embrace ya fightin' spirit." She drawled in an imitation of the warrior trainer back at the village. 'Sides, I'd rather fight a hundred troggs than try ta climb another wall with a broken leg."

Eli shot her a dirty look at her, before sighing, and flexing his arms. Kinta tucked the knife he'd given her in the waistband of her pants, and filled her free hand with stones, shaking the sling loose. Lakshmi made a soft chirrup noise, and Eli saw Kinta's white teeth flash for a second in the dark.

"That's right baby. We're goin' hunting, but you gotta be good. No chasin' strays unless I tell ya, and finish 'em quick as ya can. No playin'."

Lakshmi made the soft hoot noise that Eli had learned meant the raptor's agreement, and the three of them set out into the darkness towards the trogg camp.

Three hours later, Eli and Kinta were sitting in the chief trogg's hut, while Lakshmi chased the troggs' herd of cave rats around the village. Eli was digging in the chest he'd found under the chief's bed.

Kinta was sitting on the bed, grateful to have her leg up and resting.

"I still can't believe we got away with that." He kept muttering. "We should have been slaughtered."

"Yannow, for someone who makes with the sneaky, ya sure underestimate the value of something keeping everything busy." Kinta yawned, with a definite tinge of 'I told you so' in her voice.

"It's not a tactic I'm familiar with," Eli retorted, "I work alone. Always."

"That's stupid elf. But even then, ya should have believed me when I said Lakshmi could handle that group for a while. Ya wouldn't have got that hole in your arm."

"Well, your raptor is ridiculously thick-skinned. I swear I saw the trogg spears bouncing off her hide." He said defensively.

"She ain't a raptor." Kinta said, yawning again. The climbs and then the strain of fighting had her way past exhausted and into loopy. She knew there was a reason she shouldn't be telling Eli about Lakshmi, but she couldn't think of it and it probably wasn't really important.

"Of course she's a raptor." He muttered, "You have lost it, lady." His fingers brushed against something in the bottom that zapped him with a little electric shock.

"Nah, she ain't."

"So what is she, an overgrown tree lizard?" He tossed out a ragged hide, trying to find whatever the zapping thing was. It was surprisingly elusive.

"Nah. Ever been to Un'goro Crater?"

Eli paused. "You mean the crater with the gigantic dinosaurs, that the Cenarion Circle have decreed should never be removed from the area because they are extremely dangerous?"

"That's the one!" Kinta giggled. "But she ain't dangerous, she's mah baby!"

Eli stared. "Malfurion's tits, lady. You're running around with a baby dinosaur. An illegal baby dinosaur!" His fingers closed on the thing in the bottom, and he pulled it out triumphantly. "And your plan was to walk into Astranaar and hope no one noticed." That was when he noticed he was holding a giant carved phallus, with runes and charms glowing blue on the surface.

"Why ya holding a giant dick, mon?" Kinta asked, blearily, as she rubbed at her eyes, laying back down on the bed.

Eli dropped it, but it was too late, he could already feel the charm taking hold, and his pants getting four sizes too small. He started swearing. Apparently the trogg chieftain had needed a little help with the ladies, and had gotten the village shaman to fix him up.

He looked hopefully over towards Kinta, but she wasn't even snoring, she was so out of it. For a long few moments he debated trying to wake her up, but not even his dick thought that was a good idea. He stomped stiffly out of the little hut, sure he could just handle it himself.

Two hours later, he was back in the hut, shaking her shoulder. "Kitten, wake up." It was the desperation in his voice that woke her more than the words. She squinted at him, as she tried to sit up. "Eli? What is it? More troggs?"

"No no, drink this, please drink this as fast as you can." He said, handing her the healing potion he'd found in the shaman's hut, his hands shaking. He'd masturbated four times and the condition still wasn't going away. He'd tried to wait it out, and let her sleep before giving her the potion, but he couldn't stand the pain any more.

"Oh, hey!" She fumbled with the cork, while Eli vibrated next to the bed, bouncing up and down from a squat to kneeling and back onto his heels. "What the hell got into you?"

"Don't mind me, drink it!"

"I'm drinking! Geez, ya pushy, elf. Is there a dragon outside or something?" She drained the little bottle. She groaned in relief as the potion went to work, pulling the little shards of bone back into a solid again, knitting muscles back into place. Eli stroked her arm gently, rocking back and forth on his toes.

"How's it feel?" He asked. "Better?"

Kinta sat up, and started unwrapping the splint, "Feels better, yeah." She'd barely gotten the last of the wrap off before he was prodding her leg gently, his spare hand caressing her calf.

"Feels solid, might still be a hairline fracture or two, but not the splintered mess it was." He muttered quickly. Kinta stared at him. He was breathing hard, and looked like he'd been fed straight voodoo juice.

"You ok? You're all red in the face and breathing hard." Kinta squinted at him. "And you smell funny."

Eli's hands roamed up to her thighs. "No, no I am not ok." His hands squeezed her thighs convulsively. "The recently deceased head Trogg had some impotence problem, and I accidentally touched his totem cure. I have spent the last two hours wrestling with the biggest erection I've ever had, and if I don't fuck someone, I'm going to explode! I was holding onto the healing potion as long as I could, but I can't stand it anymore!"

Kinta's eyes widened, and then narrowed. She looked down at the little bottle in her hand, and then back up at him.

Eli grinned at her hopefully, his higher processes completely frazzled by the last hours of frustration and painful discomfort. He was completely unprepared for the fist that came straight into his jaw, and sent him flying back across the small hut.

"What the …" Eli yelled, almost too confused to be angry, as he staggered to his feet.

"You tree-huggin' bastard!" Kinta screamed, following him across the tent. Her fist drove into his gut, and he doubled over, the wind driven out of his lungs.

"How long have you been hiding that potion?! I've been suffering the agonies of hell and you had a healing potion?!" Kinta's eyes were glowing red, as the trolls' legendary temper took over.

"It's not like …" Eli wheezed, as he tried to stand up. "Hang on.." He inhaled deeply, trying to replace the air that was gone so he could explain.

"I thought we were friends! What, didn't wanna waste a potion on a troll until ya were desperate enough for me to be better? So ya could fuck me?!"

Eli caught both her hands as she swung to punch him again, "Ok, now just listen a moment," he gasped.

Kinta brought her knee up into his crotch with all of her strength. Eli would have screamed if he'd had enough air, as the pain threatened to knock him out. He was almost certain something had ruptured, as the hours of swelling had already had him sensitized to the point of every heart beat being painful as blood surged in and out of his junk. He let go of her wrists, and dropped into a fetal ball, trying to inhale enough air so he could do more than whimper. He really hoped he could die soon so the hurting would stop.

Kinta felt so incredibly stupid. "I guess this be why we can't just send ya a message. Because you can't be trusted." She spat out, before limping out of the hut. She couldn't stand to look at him another second, as the shame and pain ballooned inside her into a ball of agony. She'd been so stupid. She'd trusted him, believed that he cared whether she hurt or not. She'd even known he was one of the spies, the kind who make a living off of lies and deceit, and she'd still fallen for his act.

She was shocked at how badly finding out the truth hurt, at the tears that wouldn't stop running down her cheeks. She whistled sharply. Lakshmi came running immediately. Kinta quickly separated out the packs, leaving the majority of the food behind, and everything that wasn't hers, down to the linen scraps from his former disguise. She hesitated only a moment before she took the knife he'd given her out, and set it on top of the pile she'd designated as his.

Lakshmi made a confused hooting noise as Kinta started walking towards the troggs' surface access tunnel. Kinta didn't turn around. "Lakshmi, come." The big lizard followed obediently.

An eternity later, Eli managed to stand up. He threw up once, but remained upright.

"I'm … I'm gonna kill her." He mumbled. "After I explain … Oh Gods it hurts." He staggered out of the hut, and yelled, "Dammit Kinta!" The herd of cave rats that had been milling around in front of the hut scattered and ran for it. He stared at them, unwilling to believe what the cave rats meant.

The cave rats should have been hiding as long as the dinosaur was nearby to chase them. Their return to the camp meant that Lakshmi was far away, and that meant Kinta had left. He walked towards whatever it was that the cave rats had been clustered around. He stared at the pack she'd left, his knife in the dirt next to it.

He felt like he'd been punched again. Kinta had left believing that he had been holding out on her with a healing potion, that he'd let her suffer for a week through tortures he might have wished on his worst enemy. She'd been furious, clearly hurt by what she viewed as a betrayal, and yet she'd still left him not only most of the food and water, but the dagger that was one of the only two weapons she'd had. He couldn't think of a single person he knew that would have left the supplies, or the weapon. Hell, most of the ones he'd known would have finished him off for less than what Kinta believed he'd done, but she'd left a very clear message. He'd have no reason to follow her, no reason to find her. She'd taken nothing of his, and left him more than half of what they shared. She never wanted to see him again.

Eli picked the pack up, and tucked the dagger back into its sheath, but he didn't move. Why was he feeling like someone had just dropped a trapdoor under his feet? He'd been accused of a lot of things that were worse, and hadn't even bothered to read the wanted posters. Hell, he'd even done things worse. Like that time he'd spent six months seducing that smuggler to get information on the Defias. He hadn't even blinked when they dragged her to the headsman. The difference was so obvious, it took him a while to realize it. Kinta and he were technically enemies. But she'd never displayed anything but honesty, integrity, and honor while they travelled together. She hadn't tried to persuade him to her point of view, or take advantage of the 'inexperienced priest' she'd thought him to be. And he hadn't intended to have sex with her. She'd saved his life. He'd saved hers. They were square.

Except that he'd hurt her badly, and she hadn't deserved to be hurt. The debt was on his side, and he simply could not stand to owe someone something. The bonds of obligation chafed at him.

In a way he couldn't articulate to himself, he was most offended that the memory of seeing that first slow smile might be permanently tarnished with failure and regret.

He was moving towards the trogg tunnel before he realized he'd made the decision to follow her. He'd have to hurry. He had no idea how long he'd been out, and Kinta could make good time now that her main injuries were healed.


	6. Chapter 6

When the first whiff of the fresh air hit Kinta's nose, she was so happy she almost stopped crying. She knew she should wait until the sun went down, but she wasn't willing to risk meeting Eli again. She bound up her eyes and Lakshmi's with some leftover strips of linen, as the first warning rays of the bright light lit up the cave around her.

The steps into the sun were blinding, painful, even through the strips of cloth. It was barely even a minute before Kinta felt like her eyes were on fire, and the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Lakshmi whined in pain, ducking her head away from the sun. Kinta took hold of Lakshmi's neck firmly. "Come on baby. We gotta keep going." Kinta squinted at the hazy shadows of the coastline. "I think we're south of the Zoram Strand. We can get to Zoram'gar. If we avoid the hydra."

Kinta glanced back at the cave for a second, and then pushed Lakshmi towards the water line. "No footprints." Keeping her hand on the lizard's neck, the two stumbled up the coast line, the water licking their footprints away.

Jamba was bored. "Hey Tolli," he called to the other sentry currently half-asleep in the other watchtower. "How long we gotta be up here before the new recruits cycle in?"

Tolli, an older troll with the sharpest eyes and the quickest shot in the post, propped his hat up to peer with one bleary eye at Jamba. "Don' get impatient, kid. It's only been three weeks."

Jamba propped his chin on his hand. "Yeah, but nothing's happening. No naga attacks, no night elf incursions. Nothin' wants this stretch of sand but us and those cultists on the other side of the bay, and they ain't stupid enough to attack. Hell, ya could handle the whole thing ya'self easily."

Tolli switched the splinter of wood he was chewing on from one side of his mouth to the other, giving Jamba a long, steady look. "Look, ya dream girl gone on a mission for Vol'jin. Those ain't quick or easy, so ya ain't got no reason to rush back ta Sen'jin. If she comes back, it won't be for a while. So relax and quit yer bitchin'." Jamba had only mentioned wanting to get back to Sen'jin to wait for the girl he had a crush on two or three times a day for the last two weeks.

Jamba made a noncommittal noise in response, even as he surreptitiously pulled his sketchbook out of his pocket, and peeked at the picture he'd drawn.

It'd been a festival night, and he'd been up on the witch doctor's roof hanging lights. She'd been sitting on the beach fishing with her raptor. She'd carefully unbraided her hair and let it blow in the breeze. He'd stared, struck by the picture of her dark blue hair rippling against the teal waters of the sea. It had made his fingers itch for his brush and paints. He'd done a quick sketch in the blank book he carried, but the image had burned itself on his memory. He'd gone out of his way to run into her the rest of the day, and they'd spoken twice, but she seemed reserved and aloof. He'd decided she wasn't that interested in him.

A wistful smile crept up on his face as he remembered the hope and happy anticipation he'd felt when she came swaying up to him during the dancing, all curves and a wide smile. She'd been so drunk though that he wasn't sure she even knew who he was. The smell of straight jungle rum almost knocked him over. And he wanted her to know who he was, wanted her to know he was really attracted to her, and interested in getting to know her for more than a one night stand. And he wanted to be sure she'd been genuinely interested in him, instead of some voodoo-juice hallucination. So he'd put her off. He figured he could find her the next day and explain that, but she'd left the village before dawn.

Jamba wasn't too worried. The hunters all came and checked in regularly, and he'd bribed the keeper of the hunter pet pens to let him know when she came through. She'd come back, and then immediately gone on some errand for Vol'jin. She'd come back. He hoped.

He leaned on the spear, and squinted at the ocean. He saw a figure walking up the beach, clinging to a pale raptor. He leaned forward, suddenly intent. He only knew of one raptor with that odd coloring. He couldn't fully make out the troll next to it, but they were wearing cloth clothing that fluttered in the sea breeze. That couldn't be right. His troll was a hunter, and wore brown leathers. He couldn't see a weapon either.

Jamba whistled sharply. Tolli pushed the hat back up again.

Jamba said, "Tolli, I'm gonna go check something out down the beach. Keep an eye on me, eh? Somethin' ain't right."

Tolli yawned, and sat up. "All right, mon. Be careful." Tolli picked up the bow and quiver that had been resting next to his chair, and leaned out over the wall so he could see. He watched Jamba swing himself over the fence, rather than take the longer route down the steps and through the gate. "What got into him?" Tolli muttered. Tolli had the sharpest eyes, and he could see not only the raptor, but the indigo blue hair of the troll approaching. "Ah. " Jamba had rhapsodized about the way his dream girl's dark blue hair blew in the wind. Tolli leaned back in his chair and went back to sleep.

Jamba loped across the sand, speeding up once he could see the dark blue hair. But then he saw the bandages over her eyes, and the way she was leaning heavily on the raptor. And the lack of armor or weapons. She had bruises almost everywhere he could see, and strange reddish marks on her neck. Tear tracks were drawn down her cheeks through the thick dust that covered her from head to toe, almost hiding the blood splatters on the rags serving as clothes.

He stopped a few feet away, a lump rising in his throat. "Kinta?" He didn't ask if she was ok, because she clearly wasn't. "That you? What happened to ya?!"

Kinta's head lifted, and she squinted through the bandages. She saw a roughly male troll shape, and sighed in relief. "We made it Lakshmi." She murmured, before prying up a corner of the bandage over her eyes. She managed to get a glimpse of blue skin and bright green hair that seemed to go along with the nagging familiarity of the voice, but she couldn't place either before the brightness blinded her again.

"I got caught in a cave-in down in Stonetalon. We've been in the dark for ... a while. My eyes haven't readjusted yet, so I can't see who ya are, I'm sorry. Are we near Zoram'gar?"

Jamba took the big straw hat off his head and plopped it down on top of her head. "It's Jamba. Here, my hat might help with the brightness. You're right around the corner from the fort. Come on, we'll get ya some help and cleaned up. Is that blood yours?"

Kinta held a hand out in front of her, the other on her raptor. "Nah. Blood belonged to some troggs."

Jamba gently took her hand in his. "Come on, I'll walk ya to the gate."

Jamba took her to the inn, and then scrambled back up onto the wall. Tolli tipped his hat back as Jamba got back into position .

"'Zat your blue-haired beauty, kid?"

"Yeah. She got caught in a cave-in down Stonetalon." Jamba said. He leaned on the wall, looking out at the ocean. "Had a bad time of it."

"No shit. Ya gonna talk to her while she's here?"

Jamba frowned. "It might not be the best time, Tolli. I don' want her to think I'm taking advantage of her down times."

Tolli made a rude noise with his lips. "Kid, take some advice from ya elders. There ain't no good time, there ain't no bad times. There's only time, and ya gotta make the most of what ya got. Now, me, I be noticin' she ain't got a bow. For a hunter, that's like missin' a leg. Ya wanna be all subtle and show her ya care and admire her strength, get 'er a bow."

Jamba grinned. "Ya pretty smart for an old geezer."

Tolli dropped his hat back over his eyes with a rude gesture.

Kinta sat in the inn, two days later, trying to overcome the feeling of strangeness. She should have felt at home, surrounded by the familiar timber construction of troll buildings, the smells of spicy fish stew filling the air, and the sounds of laughter and conversation in language she understood. Instead, she felt lost and alone. The only good thing was that the innkeeper was willing to give her room and board on credit, because she was on an official errand for Vol'jin.

Maybe it was the clothes. While she'd been scrubbing in the first of several baths, a bundle of clothes had been left outside. She'd almost started crying with joy when she saw them. They were huge, clearly cut for a male troll, but they were clean, heavy linen, and far less embarrassing than what she'd walked into camp wearing. She'd been grateful that she couldn't see if anyone had been ogling her when she got into camp.

Maybe it was the fact she'd damaged her eyes, and she still couldn't see clearly. The outpost healer had scolded her for an hour, and then given her a smelly ointment to rub in her eyes. She sat in the darkest corner of the inn, wiping away tears every so often as her eyes kept watering from the firelight that kept the room from darkness.

She'd only been able to eat a half bowl of stew before she felt too full to eat any more, the richness and spiciness almost too much after a week of quarter rations. Now she sat, trying to think of a single person she knew well enough that she could write and ask for a loan to get her back to Orgrimmar. The only person she could think of was her old teacher, and he was a crusty old bastard who was always disappointed when his students displayed any lack of self-sufficiency. He'd probably refuse out of the idea that he was really helping her.

The air in the room shifted directions as the innkeeper opened a window, and torches threw strange shadows around the room. She inhaled as Eli sprung to mind, the shadow on the opposite wall folding itself into a crouched figure, and then disappearing as the flame stood up straight again. The pain of remembering what happened shot through her chest, this time laden with guilt. She'd not only failed in her judgment of Eli, but she'd failed her mission. No matter what Eli did, he had promised to capture her, and get the message off to the druids. If she hadn't gotten too personal with the elf, she wouldn't have been hurt by his betrayal, and Vol'jin's message might still be going through. As it was, she had no weapons, no armor, no money, and Vol'jin's message was stuck. She'd have to start all over again. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, to push the tears that had started at the thought back where they came from.

"Hey, Kinta?"

She looked up to see Jamba standing in front of her table. There was some sort of sick humor to her meeting the one troll she'd failed spectacularly to hook up with the day after a spectacular failure caused by hooking up with an elf. Jamba was handsome, with a bright green Mohawk over pale blue skin, and large tusks that seemed to extend his smile beyond his head. He was a gentle giant, tasked to guarding the troll villages, and teaching the young ones when he wasn't out on guard duty rotation, and he had a deep bass voice that was like thick, warm syrup. He was so friendly and good humored that even Kinta had felt comfortable talking to him.

"Hi Jamba." Kinta tried to smile, but she couldn't force her lips to cooperate. "Thanks for the help, earlier."

"You look like ya feelin' better." Jamba said cheerfully. He liked the way his shirt fell in folds around her, even though she'd belted it up tight to keep it from falling off. Her hair was tightly braided but clean, and while the bruises and marks were still visible, they didn't seem quite so bad. He grinned at her and then noticed the bleakness in her eyes. His smile fell a bit, "Well, physically."

Kinta managed to get one corner of her mouth up in a smile. "Physically yeah. I'm just tryin' ta figure out where to go from here, and my eyes are still adjusting." _They'd adjust faster if I'd quit crying._

Jamba shuffled his feet. He'd been practicing what to say on the wyvern rides to Orgrimmar and back. "Well, I did want to say somethin' to ya, if you don't mind. You don't have ta do anything about it, 'cause I know ya in the middle of a lotta shit, but I just wanted ta … to explain something so you'd know."

Kinta blinked, and then winced. He was going to tell her that he hadn't been attracted to her, or that he was mated, or something equally humiliating. She put her hands in her lap so he wouldn't see them clenching her pants legs in her fists. "Go ahead." She managed, calmly.

Jamba took a deep breath, "We met a while ago at Sen'jin, durin' the festival night. I was surprised when you came up to me, because I didn't think ya liked me much. But, I was glad because I was wanting ta get to know you better."

Kinta's brow wrinkled. "So ya turned me down because ya wanted to get ta know me better? That don't make sense."

Jamba ran a hand through his hair, "Sure it does. See, I was interested in ya before you came over." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his sketchbook, opening it to the page of the drawing before laying it on the table with deliberate care. "I was hanging lights, and I saw you fishing on the beach. You were beautiful." He hoped she wouldn't laugh.

Kinta stared at the picture. The troll was beautiful, and yet it was her. The lines of spine and bones were straight and strong, the hands on the rod in casual control, but the softness of her hair blowing in the wind tempered it into delicacy. She started to say something, and then couldn't, as she stared at the picture again.

"I didn't want ta be a one night stand you wouldn't remember in the morning, or a figment of some voodoo juice. So I told ya no, but it wasn't easy, lemme tell ya." said Jamba, watching the play of emotions over her face in fascination.

"Oh." was all Kinta could manage, as a blush ran up her cheeks and down her neck. "I thought …" She glanced around the room, but the only other person in the inn was the innkeeper, sleeping on one of the tables.

"Though I was politely blowin' ya off?"

Kinta rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah."

"Nah." Jamba's smile snuck back, and he picked up his sketchbook and tucked it back into his pocket. "Just didn't wanna waste a good thing, maybe."

Kinta didn't know what to say. The silence stretched out between them. Jamba cleared his throat.

"So, ya don't have ta say anything now. I mean, I ain't the smartest guy around, but I ain't too ugly, and I'm a good fighter, and I'm loyal and trustworthy. If ya ain't really interested, just say so, an' I won't bother ya ever again, I promise." He said, a small lump in his throat.

"It's not that …" Kinta said, in a whisper. Her throat was so tight with nerves that it was an effort to even get that much out. She grabbed her glass and took a swallow, before trying again. "I gotta finish this thing for Vol'jin, and I don' know how or when I'll be done. Might be a few months or more."

Jamba shrugged. "I'll wait. If ya want me ta wait. I gotta feelin' ya'd be worth it." Not that it was an option for him. He'd known the instant he'd seen her sitting on the beach that he'd wait forever, if she told him to.

A small smile grew on her face, and she screwed up her courage, to whisper, "I umm… I wasn't that drunk. I knew it was you I came up to. I just didn't …" She fumbled for the right words. _ Didn't know you thought I was beautiful. Didn't know you might be interested in more than my tits. Didn't think a big, handsome troll would be willing to spend time * talking* with me. _ "didn't think you wanted to talk?"

Jamba's whole face lit up with a huge smile. "I'll wait." He reached over and tucked a loose wisp of hair back behind her ear. Kinta froze, but the troll's touch was warm and slightly clumsy, so different from … his. She relaxed again. "I gotta go get back on watch, and you got things ya need ta focus on, but I gotcha a little present, so ya'd remember me while ya were on ya mission."

He reached into his pack, and pulled out a long skinny tube, wrapped in bright pink paper. He set it on the table. "I guess I be seein' ya later." And he practically ran out of the inn.

Kinta picked the present up, and scurried up to her room. She stroked the paper gently. It was the first present she'd ever gotten from a male. She almost didn't want to open it. She eventually, slowly pried open one end of the paper, doing her best not to rip it, and peeked.

It was a bow. And not just any bow. It was a Houndmaster's Bow. The kind of bow that the dark dwarven smiths in Blackrock made for Nefurion's elite officers. She ran a hand over the polished wood, marveling at the silky finish and perfect curve. It was better than even her best bow. But more importantly, it meant her problems were over. With a bow she could hunt. A week of hunting in Ashenvale, and she could get money to replace her armor, bags, and supplies. With a bow, she could get back to her mission.

This time she did cry.


	7. Chapter 7

When the first whiff of the fresh air hit Kinta's nose, she was so happy she almost stopped crying. She knew she should wait until the sun went down, but she wasn't willing to risk meeting Eli again. She bound up her eyes and Lakshmi's with some leftover strips of linen, as the first warning rays of the bright light lit up the cave around her.

The steps into the sun were blinding, painful, even through the strips of cloth. It was barely even a minute before Kinta felt like her eyes were on fire, and the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Lakshmi whined in pain, ducking her head away from the sun. Kinta took hold of Lakshmi's neck firmly. "Come on baby. We gotta keep going." Kinta squinted at the hazy shadows of the coastline. "I think we're south of the Zoram Strand. We can get to Zoram'gar. If we avoid the hydra."

Kinta glanced back at the cave for a second, and then pushed Lakshmi towards the water line. "No footprints." Keeping her hand on the lizard's neck, the two stumbled up the coast line, the water licking their footprints away.

Jamba was bored. "Hey Tolli," he called to the other sentry currently half-asleep in the other watchtower. "How long we gotta be up here before the new recruits cycle in?"

Tolli, an older troll with the sharpest eyes and the quickest shot in the post, propped his hat up to peer with one bleary eye at Jamba. "Don' get impatient, kid. It's only been three weeks."

Jamba propped his chin on his hand. "Yeah, but nothing's happening. No naga attacks, no night elf incursions. Nothin' wants this stretch of sand but us and those cultists on the other side of the bay, and they ain't stupid enough to attack. Hell, ya could handle the whole thing ya'self easily."

Tolli switched the splinter of wood he was chewing on from one side of his mouth to the other, giving Jamba a long, steady look. "Look, ya dream girl gone on a mission for Vol'jin. Those ain't quick or easy, so ya ain't got no reason to rush back ta Sen'jin. If she comes back, it won't be for a while. So relax and quit yer bitchin'." Jamba had only mentioned wanting to get back to Sen'jin to wait for the girl he had a crush on two or three times a day for the last two weeks.

Jamba made a noncommittal noise in response, even as he surreptitiously pulled his sketchbook out of his pocket, and peeked at the picture he'd drawn.

It'd been a festival night, and he'd been up on the witch doctor's roof hanging lights. She'd been sitting on the beach fishing with her raptor. She'd carefully unbraided her hair and let it blow in the breeze. He'd stared, struck by the picture of her dark blue hair rippling against the teal waters of the sea. It had made his fingers itch for his brush and paints. He'd done a quick sketch in the blank book he carried, but the image had burned itself on his memory. He'd gone out of his way to run into her the rest of the day, and they'd spoken twice, but she seemed reserved and aloof. He'd decided she wasn't that interested in him.

A wistful smile crept up on his face as he remembered the hope and happy anticipation he'd felt when she came swaying up to him during the dancing, all curves and a wide smile. She'd been so drunk though that he wasn't sure she even knew who he was. The smell of straight jungle rum almost knocked him over. And he wanted her to know who he was, wanted her to know he was really attracted to her, and interested in getting to know her for more than a one night stand. And he wanted to be sure she'd been genuinely interested in him, instead of some voodoo-juice hallucination. So he'd put her off. He figured he could find her the next day and explain that, but she'd left the village before dawn.

Jamba wasn't too worried. The hunters all came and checked in regularly, and he'd bribed the keeper of the hunter pet pens to let him know when she came through. She'd come back, and then immediately gone on some errand for Vol'jin. She'd come back. He hoped.

He leaned on the spear, and squinted at the ocean. He saw a figure walking up the beach, clinging to a pale raptor. He leaned forward, suddenly intent. He only knew of one raptor with that odd coloring. He couldn't fully make out the troll next to it, but they were wearing cloth clothing that fluttered in the sea breeze. That couldn't be right. His troll was a hunter, and wore brown leathers. He couldn't see a weapon either.

Jamba whistled sharply. Tolli pushed the hat back up again.

Jamba said, "Tolli, I'm gonna go check something out down the beach. Keep an eye on me, eh? Somethin' ain't right."

Tolli yawned, and sat up. "All right, mon. Be careful." Tolli picked up the bow and quiver that had been resting next to his chair, and leaned out over the wall so he could see. He watched Jamba swing himself over the fence, rather than take the longer route down the steps and through the gate. "What got into him?" Tolli muttered. Tolli had the sharpest eyes, and he could see not only the raptor, but the indigo blue hair of the troll approaching. "Ah. " Jamba had rhapsodized about the way his dream girl's dark blue hair blew in the wind. Tolli leaned back in his chair and went back to sleep.

Jamba loped across the sand, speeding up once he could see the dark blue hair. But then he saw the bandages over her eyes, and the way she was leaning heavily on the raptor. And the lack of armor or weapons. She had bruises almost everywhere he could see, and strange reddish marks on her neck. Tear tracks were drawn down her cheeks through the thick dust that covered her from head to toe, almost hiding the blood splatters on the rags serving as clothes.

He stopped a few feet away, a lump rising in his throat. "Kinta?" He didn't ask if she was ok, because she clearly wasn't. "That you? What happened to ya?!"

Kinta's head lifted, and she squinted through the bandages. She saw a roughly male troll shape, and sighed in relief. "We made it Lakshmi." She murmured, before prying up a corner of the bandage over her eyes. She managed to get a glimpse of blue skin and bright green hair that seemed to go along with the nagging familiarity of the voice, but she couldn't place either before the brightness blinded her again.

"I got caught in a cave-in down in Stonetalon. We've been in the dark for ... a while. My eyes haven't readjusted yet, so I can't see who ya are, I'm sorry. Are we near Zoram'gar?"

Jamba took the big straw hat off his head and plopped it down on top of her head. "It's Jamba. Here, my hat might help with the brightness. You're right around the corner from the fort. Come on, we'll get ya some help and cleaned up. Is that blood yours?"

Kinta held a hand out in front of her, the other on her raptor. "Nah. Blood belonged to some troggs."

Jamba gently took her hand in his. "Come on, I'll walk ya to the gate."

Jamba took her to the inn, and then scrambled back up onto the wall. Tolli tipped his hat back as Jamba got back into position .

"'Zat your blue-haired beauty, kid?"

"Yeah. She got caught in a cave-in down Stonetalon." Jamba said. He leaned on the wall, looking out at the ocean. "Had a bad time of it."

"No shit. Ya gonna talk to her while she's here?"

Jamba frowned. "It might not be the best time, Tolli. I don' want her to think I'm taking advantage of her down times."

Tolli made a rude noise with his lips. "Kid, take some advice from ya elders. There ain't no good time, there ain't no bad times. There's only time, and ya gotta make the most of what ya got. Now, me, I be noticin' she ain't got a bow. For a hunter, that's like missin' a leg. Ya wanna be all subtle and show her ya care and admire her strength, get 'er a bow."

Jamba grinned. "Ya pretty smart for an old geezer."

Tolli dropped his hat back over his eyes with a rude gesture.

Kinta sat in the inn, two days later, trying to overcome the feeling of strangeness. She should have felt at home, surrounded by the familiar timber construction of troll buildings, the smells of spicy fish stew filling the air, and the sounds of laughter and conversation in language she understood. Instead, she felt lost and alone. The only good thing was that the innkeeper was willing to give her room and board on credit, because she was on an official errand for Vol'jin.

Maybe it was the clothes. While she'd been scrubbing in the first of several baths, a bundle of clothes had been left outside. She'd almost started crying with joy when she saw them. They were huge, clearly cut for a male troll, but they were clean, heavy linen, and far less embarrassing than what she'd walked into camp wearing. She'd been grateful that she couldn't see if anyone had been ogling her when she got into camp.

Maybe it was the fact she'd damaged her eyes, and she still couldn't see clearly. The outpost healer had scolded her for an hour, and then given her a smelly ointment to rub in her eyes. She sat in the darkest corner of the inn, wiping away tears every so often as her eyes kept watering from the firelight that kept the room from darkness.

She'd only been able to eat a half bowl of stew before she felt too full to eat any more, the richness and spiciness almost too much after a week of quarter rations. Now she sat, trying to think of a single person she knew well enough that she could write and ask for a loan to get her back to Orgrimmar. The only person she could think of was her old teacher, and he was a crusty old bastard who was always disappointed when his students displayed any lack of self-sufficiency. He'd probably refuse out of the idea that he was really helping her.

The air in the room shifted directions as the innkeeper opened a window, and torches threw strange shadows around the room. She inhaled as Eli sprung to mind, the shadow on the opposite wall folding itself into a crouched figure, and then disappearing as the flame stood up straight again. The pain of remembering what happened shot through her chest, this time laden with guilt. She'd not only failed in her judgment of Eli, but she'd failed her mission. No matter what Eli did, he had promised to capture her, and get the message off to the druids. If she hadn't gotten too personal with the elf, she wouldn't have been hurt by his betrayal, and Vol'jin's message might still be going through. As it was, she had no weapons, no armor, no money, and Vol'jin's message was stuck. She'd have to start all over again. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, to push the tears that had started at the thought back where they came from.

"Hey, Kinta?"

She looked up to see Jamba standing in front of her table. There was some sort of sick humor to her meeting the one troll she'd failed spectacularly to hook up with the day after a spectacular failure caused by hooking up with an elf. Jamba was handsome, with a bright green Mohawk over pale blue skin, and large tusks that seemed to extend his smile beyond his head. He was a gentle giant, tasked to guarding the troll villages, and teaching the young ones when he wasn't out on guard duty rotation, and he had a deep bass voice that was like thick, warm syrup. He was so friendly and good humored that even Kinta had felt comfortable talking to him.

"Hi Jamba." Kinta tried to smile, but she couldn't force her lips to cooperate. "Thanks for the help, earlier."

"You look like ya feelin' better." Jamba said cheerfully. He liked the way his shirt fell in folds around her, even though she'd belted it up tight to keep it from falling off. Her hair was tightly braided but clean, and while the bruises and marks were still visible, they didn't seem quite so bad. He grinned at her and then noticed the bleakness in her eyes. His smile fell a bit, "Well, physically."

Kinta managed to get one corner of her mouth up in a smile. "Physically yeah. I'm just tryin' ta figure out where to go from here, and my eyes are still adjusting." _They'd adjust faster if I'd quit crying._

Jamba shuffled his feet. He'd been practicing what to say on the wyvern rides to Orgrimmar and back. "Well, I did want to say somethin' to ya, if you don't mind. You don't have ta do anything about it, 'cause I know ya in the middle of a lotta shit, but I just wanted ta … to explain something so you'd know."

Kinta blinked, and then winced. He was going to tell her that he hadn't been attracted to her, or that he was mated, or something equally humiliating. She put her hands in her lap so he wouldn't see them clenching her pants legs in her fists. "Go ahead." She managed, calmly.

Jamba took a deep breath, "We met a while ago at Sen'jin, durin' the festival night. I was surprised when you came up to me, because I didn't think ya liked me much. But, I was glad because I was wanting ta get to know you better."

Kinta's brow wrinkled. "So ya turned me down because ya wanted to get ta know me better? That don't make sense."

Jamba ran a hand through his hair, "Sure it does. See, I was interested in ya before you came over." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his sketchbook, opening it to the page of the drawing before laying it on the table with deliberate care. "I was hanging lights, and I saw you fishing on the beach. You were beautiful." He hoped she wouldn't laugh.

Kinta stared at the picture. The troll was beautiful, and yet it was her. The lines of spine and bones were straight and strong, the hands on the rod in casual control, but the softness of her hair blowing in the wind tempered it into delicacy. She started to say something, and then couldn't, as she stared at the picture again.

"I didn't want ta be a one night stand you wouldn't remember in the morning, or a figment of some voodoo juice. So I told ya no, but it wasn't easy, lemme tell ya." said Jamba, watching the play of emotions over her face in fascination.

"Oh." was all Kinta could manage, as a blush ran up her cheeks and down her neck. "I thought …" She glanced around the room, but the only other person in the inn was the innkeeper, sleeping on one of the tables.

"Though I was politely blowin' ya off?"

Kinta rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah."

"Nah." Jamba's smile snuck back, and he picked up his sketchbook and tucked it back into his pocket. "Just didn't wanna waste a good thing, maybe."

Kinta didn't know what to say. The silence stretched out between them. Jamba cleared his throat.

"So, ya don't have ta say anything now. I mean, I ain't the smartest guy around, but I ain't too ugly, and I'm a good fighter, and I'm loyal and trustworthy. If ya ain't really interested, just say so, an' I won't bother ya ever again, I promise." He said, a small lump in his throat.

"It's not that …" Kinta said, in a whisper. Her throat was so tight with nerves that it was an effort to even get that much out. She grabbed her glass and took a swallow, before trying again. "I gotta finish this thing for Vol'jin, and I don' know how or when I'll be done. Might be a few months or more."

Jamba shrugged. "I'll wait. If ya want me ta wait. I gotta feelin' ya'd be worth it." Not that it was an option for him. He'd known the instant he'd seen her sitting on the beach that he'd wait forever, if she told him to.

A small smile grew on her face, and she screwed up her courage, to whisper, "I umm… I wasn't that drunk. I knew it was you I came up to. I just didn't …" She fumbled for the right words. _ Didn't know you thought I was beautiful. Didn't know you might be interested in more than my tits. Didn't think a big, handsome troll would be willing to spend time * talking* with me. _ "didn't think you wanted to talk?"

Jamba's whole face lit up with a huge smile. "I'll wait." He reached over and tucked a loose wisp of hair back behind her ear. Kinta froze, but the troll's touch was warm and slightly clumsy, so different from … his. She relaxed again. "I gotta go get back on watch, and you got things ya need ta focus on, but I gotcha a little present, so ya'd remember me while ya were on ya mission."

He reached into his pack, and pulled out a long skinny tube, wrapped in bright pink paper. He set it on the table. "I guess I be seein' ya later." And he practically ran out of the inn.

Kinta picked the present up, and scurried up to her room. She stroked the paper gently. It was the first present she'd ever gotten from a male. She almost didn't want to open it. She eventually, slowly pried open one end of the paper, doing her best not to rip it, and peeked.

It was a bow. And not just any bow. It was a Houndmaster's Bow. The kind of bow that the dark dwarven smiths in Blackrock made for Nefurion's elite officers. She ran a hand over the polished wood, marveling at the silky finish and perfect curve. It was better than even her best bow. But more importantly, it meant her problems were over. With a bow she could hunt. A week of hunting in Ashenvale, and she could get money to replace her armor, bags, and supplies. With a bow, she could get back to her mission.

This time she did cry.


	8. Chapter 8

Eli'ando didn't try to leave the cave until dark, knowing that his eyes wouldn't tolerate the adjustment. The moonlight was like stepping into noonday sun, but he could see.

He immediately recognized the coastline. _Zoram Strand._ Kinta must have pushed through the blinding sunlight knowing that the Horde outpost was nearby. He smiled briefly. It was a professional smile.

_First mistake, Kitten. _It would take days before Kinta could see well enough to go out in the sunlight after that kind of abuse. Giving him enough time to get to Astranaar, and back to Zoram'gar to wait until she came out.

He started running.

Kinta had intended to wait until the next night to use her bow, but she couldn't sleep. Her brain kept wondering about the draw length, and the poundage, whether the flex of the bow was even or weighted to the top. Two hours after she'd opened the present, she was slipping downstairs and out to the pens. Lakshmi hooted loudly, stomping her feet excitedly when Kinta opened the door.

"I know baby. Ya wanna go hunting." Kinta scratched the dinosaur's nose. "We'll go see what's stirring."

The night was clear and beautiful, with still air and a slight chill coming off the ground. Kinta couldn't help but smile as she and Lakshmi moved into the forest.

Two elk and one bear later, Kinta was in love with her new bow. The pull was so smooth that she almost couldn't feel the draw stop. And the power! It sent arrows at least twice as far as her old one, without a harder pull.

Lakshmi trilled her joy in the kill as she stole a bite of bear meat while Kinta wrestled the skin away from the carcass.

"Bad girl!" said Kinta, but without rancor. Her mood had been vastly improved by the hunt. Faint halos still haunted her vision, but she'd only missed two shots. She packed the bearskin onto Lakshmi, next to the two elk hides. Lakshmi stole another bite of bear.

"You're gonna get fat, baby." Kinta muttered, but she stroked the scaly neck gently.

Eli watched her skinning the bear from his perch up in the tree. He thought Lakshmi had caught his scent once, but Kinta had been intent on her shot and hadn't paid attention. The raptor had looked his direction and then gotten distracted by the liver piece Kinta tossed her.

He stared down at the dinosaur. That was really the difficult part. Normally he'd just kill the pet, and then move on his target, but that wasn't an option. For what he had in mind, Lakshmi needed an extended stay somewhere safe. If he wanted Kinta at all cooperative, the lizard needed to be unquestionably secure and cared for. Which meant he'd have to do this the hard way.

He followed them to three more kills, before Kinta turned her steps back towards the outpost. He knew she'd have to take the long road around to avoid the War Ancient that roamed the forest border near the strand. The War Ancients wouldn't attack a night elf, so he could go straight to the Horde outpost. He waited until the sentry turned the corner before climbing over the fence and quickly making his way onto the inn roof. It was twenty more minutes before Kinta came through the gates. One of the sentries hurried over from his post on the opposite wall to talk to her. Eli couldn't hear what they said, but it seemed friendly enough.

He smiled in relief as Kinta walked back out with Lakshmi's harness slung over her shoulder. He'd hoped she wouldn't be willing to leave Vol'jin's message unattended in the public stables.

Kinta was exhausted. The ordeal in the caves seemed to have sapped her stamina. What she would have normally considered a nice beginning to an evening hunt had wiped her out. By the time she'd removed Lakshmi's harness and put her back into the keeper's pens, Kinta wanted nothing more than to fall into bed. She dragged herself up the stairs, and into her room, kicking the harness under her bed. She carefully set the bow down against the wall, and started to pull her shirt over her head.

"Hey, does this smell like knockout drops to you?" She heard a familiar voice murmur in her ear, even as a wet cloth pressed itself tightly against her nose and mouth, and a strong arm looped around her waist, locking her into place.

She had enough time to make a confused noise of protest, before she slumped in Eli's arms, unconscious.

"Glad to see me Kitten?" Eli asked, even as he lay her down on her bed. He grabbed the harness, removing the message roll from the secret compartment and tucking it into his vest. Then he got busy with his make-up.

Thirty minutes later, the sentry raised the gate for a stumbling drunk pair of trolls. He didn't quite recognize the male wearing the large floppy hat. But he recognized the female who was cuddled up tightly in his arms, so he opened the gate. _~Poor Jamba.~_ was his only thought.

When Kinta woke up, her first thought was surprise at waking up at all. Her thoughts were muzzy, but eventually memory returned. She sat up, and nearly fell over, as her hands were tied together in front of her, looped to a similar binding around her ankles. She couldn't see anything but darkness, and panic rose up in her throat. Had she gone blind after all?!

"Relax Kitten," said a familiar, ironic voice. "What's a little kidnapping between friends?"

"Eli." She slumped back against what felt like a tree. "We ain't friends."

"You wound me, Kitten." She could hear him moving around, small shuffling noises that were familiar in their rhythm.

"I'd like ta. What the hell ya doing?!"

"Keeping my promise. I don't make many." Eli watched her face turn towards him, as he moved around the small camp.

"What promise?!"

"To get you and your message to the Archdruid, who it's addressed to." There was an odd tone in his voice, one that Kinta had thought meant genuine distress about something.

Kinta didn't say anything for a moment, but her lower lip trembled as she asked, "Where's Lakshmi?"

"In the hunter pens where you left her. Even if the Sentinels were feeling sentimental enough to let your pet live, the Cenarion Circle would absolutely confiscate your dinosaur and ship her back to Un'Goro. You're making this trip alone, Kitten."

Kinta didn't know whether to be relieved or upset. Lakshmi would undoubtedly be safer in the hunter pens, but Kinta felt like part of her was missing.

"I guess that's … Wait, you're not reading the message, are you?!"

"Kitten, take some advice. Whenever you get caught up in politics, always find out exactly what you're being sent to say." Eli read the words on the page again. This was not good.

"What if you've destroyed the seal!"

"It wasn't sealed. Vol'jin at least has some political astuteness." he said, irritably, as he folded it back into the envelope. "You're the proof that it's genuine. He probably assumed you'd read it. Unfortunately, you're just as honest and trustworthy as you should be."

Kinta frowned. "Why do you sound so pissed off?"

Eli yanked the blindfold off her face. "Because you are **screwed**, Kitten. You've been sent to tell the head night elf druid, who hates the Horde, that a new race of druids have been found, and they're members of the Horde. You're going to upset the balance of power, and if there's one things druids hate, it's being out of balance."

Kinta stared at him, too surprised to even feel the hurt she expected on seeing his face again, her jaw dropping. "I've been what?!"

"You can read it yourself if you want." Eli snarled, a muscle jumping in his jaw. "If this got to the elves first, they'd kill you, hoping they can hide the information, possibly even strike against the new druids and eliminate the problem."

Kinta stared down at the rope around her wrists and ankles. "Well, I guess that's it then. And life was starting to look so good."

Eli slid his hand down his face. The despondent tone in her voice made him angry. What right did she have to give up so easily? To assume that he was going to turn her in just because he was … supposed to.

"Your lack of confidence is insulting." He muttered.

Kinta glared at him, trying to will up enough anger to fill the hole she felt in the pit of her stomach. She'd started wondering whether she might find something special with Jamba, started feeling some hope about the future. The disappointment was surprisingly harsh.

"Why should I have confidence in someone who was willing to let me suffer?" She said acidly.

"Ah, right, I was going to explain that."

"I don't want to hear your explanations."

"Tough, because you owe me an apology." He said cheerfully.

"How in the nine fires of Ragnaros do you figure that?!" She shrieked. "Owe YOU an apology?!"

"Because I found that potion in the trogg shaman's hut! How many times did you go through the packs while I was sleeping? Did you ever get the feeling I was hiding something from you or holding out on you?!" He realized he was yelling and throttled his control back into place.

"But you SAID you were waiting as long as you could!" Kinta yelled back. "You admitted it!"

"I was waiting to WAKE you up. You were tired! I wouldn't have woken you at all, but I was in severe distress."

Her eyes narrowed at him. "How do I know you're not making all this up?! You've had enough time to come up with a good story."

"What would be the point?" He said, a half-smirk crossing his face. "If I'm a completely uncaring bastard, my going to all this trouble to kidnap you while making sure your lizard is safe is really strange because you were a much easier target while hunting earlier. Or you're wrong and you owe me an apology."

They stared at each other for a long time.

"Fine. I apologize." muttered Kinta.

Eli leaned forward and cut her loose. "Now that we have that settled, I think your best plan is to get to the Moonglade, and request an audience with Staghelm through the Tauren. And make sure your giving the letter is witnessed by both the Tauren and Night Elves."

Kinta went pale. "The only people who can get to the Moonglade are druids. Otherwise ya gotta go through Felwood."

"It's your only chance, Kitten, unless you want to go tell Vol'jin to shove this letter up his ass."

"Through the furbolg caves."

"Yep."

"I don't want to go into another cave."

"I can't say it's high on my list of priorities either." He muttered. "But the furbolgs maintain the tunnel. No cave-ins or troggs guaranteed."

She took a deep breath and stood up. "Fine. Sooner we get there, sooner we get back."

He nodded. "Now, let's talk about the part you aren't going to like."

"There isn't ANY of this I like!" She protested, her stomach sinking again.

Eli took a few prudent steps away from her. "You can't carry a bow. I brought you a sling though!"

Her shriek made the leaves fall down from the trees. He waited until she was done screeching before saying patiently, "These woods are full of Sentinels and Ancient patrols. If they run across us, they will try to kill you on sight, unless I can convince them you're a prisoner I'm escorting. Once we get to the Felwood border, you can have it back."

"Oh sure. That's assuming we'll make it through when I don't HAVE MY DAMN BOW!"

He looked insulted again. "I think I can manage to get us through. I've been there several times."

Kinta growled, "Yeah, because I just LOVED being at your mercy for my safety. Nothing more fun than being a useless lump on someone's ass. I can hardly wait."

"It wasn't that bad." He said, his eyes twinkling. "And I wouldn't say useless."

"Watch it elf." She warned.

"You were an excellent shot with that sling." He protested, innocence whoring itself out in his grin.

"Yeah, I'm sure them diseased bears an' crazy demons will tremble in fear at my sling. I just GOT that bow!"

"And you can have it back before we hit the cave, I promise. If you're a good girl and don't bite."

She scowled at him. "Fine, let's go. And give me my stupid sling."

He tossed it to her. "Wrap it around your wrists loosely so from a distance it will look like a rope."

They rode hard, keeping to the main road when possible, veering off when not. Eli's prediction of patrols was borne out before they had been on the road thirty minutes. A full complement of Sentinels, glistening with weaponry and rage, and mounted on only slightly less lethal nightsabers stopped them.

Kinta did her best to look captured and subservient, pulling the sling tighter around her wrists.

The one in front was beautiful in the way that all night elves were, fine-boned and delicate, but the beauty was marred by the rage and thirst for blood that carved grooves in her expression.

"Elian'do. What are you doing so close to Felwood? And with a troll?!" She demanded in Darnassian.

Kinta snuck a look at Eli, trying to catch clues as to the context of the nonsense syllables and was surprised at the sudden change in his posture. During most of their ride he had been alert but relaxed. Now he was sitting up straight, an air of danger and menace coiled and waiting to strike emanating from him.

"Prisoner escort, and I'm on a deadline, Sentinel Ybella. So if you don't mind moving your cats out of the road, I'd appreciate it." He said shortly. _Of all the druids in the bloody world, it has to be Ybella. _He thought.

The druid's frown deepened. Kinta shifted nervously.

"Since when are we taking prisoners? There's a war on. What do the spies want with a troll, and an ugly one at that? The latest orders are to kill any Horde members found in our borders." The questions and statements were rapid-fire, thrown at him like bullets. Her fingers flexed on her reins, her nails extending slightly.

"This is business of the Rogues, not the Sentinels. My orders come from higher up than the regional Sentinel commander." Eli's tone was dismissive, bordering on condescending. "And I'm going to follow them, so if you'd move…"

The druid dismounted, and started walking towards Eli and Kinta. Ybella stopped near Eli's mount, and slowly ran her hand up his leg.

"You're being rather terse, Eli. Almost ruuu-uude." She drawled the words out. "And you were the one who told me that no one expects people who are rude to be hiding something." Eli stiffened as her nails dug deep into his leg, not quite drawing blood through the leather, but still painful.

"I'm running late. The talbuk I had the troll riding died and I had to get another mount." Eli said, through gritted teeth. "And of course I'm hiding something." He paused, his eyes never leaving Ybella as she sauntered over to inspect Kinta. _Elune, I hope you make those knots look good, Kitten. _He had to time it right. He waited until Ybella had started her cursory examination, before saying, in as insulting a tone as he could manage, "Your clearance got revoked remember? I'm not allowed to tell you things. Something about your thirst for blood causing more problems than you were worth?"

Ybella stiffened, her attention jerked from inspecting the ropes around Kinta's wrists by his shot. Her cheeks darkened as did the tips of her ears. Kinta looked nervously at Eli. She could sense the rage and sudden embarrassment radiating from the elf, and she stared at Ybella's face, wondering what the hell Eli said to put that look on it.

Ybella looked up in time to catch Kinta staring at her, and a fist lashed out. Kinta's head rocked back with the blow, her cheek starting to swell and darken.

"Don't look at me you filthy savage!" screamed Ybella. She reached back to hit Kinta again, her claws extending this time and Eli caught her fist.

Where Ybella was enraged, Eli was white-hot with fury, his fingers so tight that the bones in her wrist started to creak. "Don't TOUCH her again, Ybella." His voice was a low growl that even Kinta flinched away from. "Or I swear by Malfurion's horns that I will go and see the Sentinel Commander, and tell her just exactly WHY you were demoted. Including the parts I didn't report the first time."

Ybella's eyes darkened, and she tried to smile at him. "Eli, you're acting so strange. " Her eyes flickered to where he was gripping her wrist tightly, and she made a peculiar noise in her throat, before murmuring, "Besides, you liked my violence. Once upon a time."

"That was before I realized that was all you had to offer." Eli snapped, dropping her wrist. "Now are you going to get out of my way, or are we going to go see the Sentinel Commander?"

Ybella and Eli stared at each other for a long few moments. Indecision held a three-way battle with injured pride and self-preservation in Ybella's face, while she scrutinized his features. Eventually she stepped back.

"You're full of shit, and I don't have time to dig it out. Fine, you can keep your pet for now. But you tell her that if I ever see her again, she's dog meat." Ybella stomped back to her mount, and with a few terse words, the squad bounded off into the shadows.

Eli in turn remounted, and jerked his head, snarling in Zandali, "Flinch back like I just threatened you. We've got to move. She's still watching."

Kinta cowered, as he kicked his mount into a trot. They rode for thirty minutes, at a pace too fast for Kinta to ask any questions. The line of his shoulders suggested that perhaps it was deliberate.

When they did stop, he picked a spot that backed right up to a cliff, ensuring that no one could approach except by the front. He tossed a pack at her. "Food's in there."

Kinta caught the pack in one hand, and watched him prowl irritably around while she pulled out some fish cakes and a bottle of melon juice. "So, ya gonna tell me why ya so pissed? An' who yer friend was?"

"Not my friend. And I'm pissed because if there was one druid I really didn't want to run into on the way, she was it."

"Yeah, she's crazy as a rabid bear. Ya can smell it on her. Somethin' wrong." She said companionably. She wasn't prepared for Eli to suddenly whirl on her, his face angry with a wild, desolate rage, the sort she'd seen on mortally wounded predators. His fist stopped a few inches from her face, before he spun and slammed it into a tree.

Kinta skittered away from him backwards on all fours, watching as he punched away at the tree in an unthinking, unfeeling need to expend the violence welling up inside him.

"An' apparently it's contagious." She muttered to herself, more disturbed than she wanted to admit. She dug in his pack. His blood was starting to spatter on the trunk before she found what she wanted.

She heard the little bones in his hand break and his howl of pain right before she tackled him. Six seconds later, he was hogtied up, elbows to knees.

It took a minute before he stopped struggling enough to gather the sense needed to form words. "What the hell are you doing?!" He snarled at her, all friendliness gone.

Kinta was sitting right on his sternum, knees on his shoulders, her weight making it impossible for him to escape. "I'm preventin' ya from abusing trees and further bone breakage. We're gonna sit nice and quiet until you convince me you haven't lost your moon-touched mind."

"It's none of your business!" He said, flatly.

"Mmm. That may be so, but ya gonna to tell me anyways." Kinta said, her tone just as flat as his. "Or we're going to sit here for a while. I don't know if ya noticed or not, but ya broke a couple bones in your hand. And your knuckles are all bloody. Gonna start hurting soon, now that the adrenaline's all gone."

"I noticed." he muttered. It was already starting to ache, the pain starting to make his arms throb.

"So talk, elf. Who's the druid?"

Silence filled the little clearing, pooling around them.

"You could let me up first. This hurts." He tried to sound as pathetic and harmless as possible.

"Nah. This is interrogation technique 314, I've been told."

He said a rude word that made Kinta bop him on the top of the head. "Mind yer language. There's a lady present. Now talk. Or I'll start settin' those bones before ya get the healing potion."

The words welled up inside him wanting to be said, almost choking him, as he muttered, barely more than a whisper. "She's my wife." He found himself hoping the words would hurt Kinta in some obscure fashion.

Kinta didn't say anything, sitting still on his back. Then she stood up and cut him loose. He stood up clumsily, unable to use the hand which had swollen up to the size of a goblin balloon and turned dark purple. She handed him the healing potion she'd also gotten out of the pack.

He drank the potion quickly, wincing as the bones reknit themselves and the pain faded down to a dull roar he could ignore with enough concentration. He looked over at Kinta, who was methodically coiling the pieces of rope that were left, her expression unreadable.

He felt annoyed by the understanding displayed by her silence, when he really wanted an argument.

"So nothing? No questions? No snarky comments about my judgment?" He said angrily.

Kinta squinted up at him for a moment, before turning her attention back to the rope in her hands. "Nope."

"I know what you're thinking." He said, snatching the just-completed coil of rope out of her lap and shoving it in his pack. "You're thinking that I'm a jerk for not telling you I was married. You're thinking that I'm an idiot for marrying her in the first place. Well you don't know a thing about it! All right? You don't know a thing about it, and I don't want to talk about it!"

"That's not what I was thinking," said Kinta, so calm that she could have given tranquility lessons to the Moon Priestess.

"Well, you WERE thinking something!"

"Yeah." She handed him the next coil of rope, and he jerked it away. His head was starting to ache, and he could feel the throbbing behind his eyes that showed up every time he got reminded of his marriage.

"What?"

Kinta sat back on her heels, and stood up. She moved back to the spilled fishcakes and melon juice, and picked them up. "You should eat something."

"Kinta…"

"Healing potions only do so much. Ya gotta give the body something ta work with, especially if ya break bones. Trust me on this one. I think I've broken every bone in my body at leas-"

"What were you thinking!" He interrupted.

Kinta sighed. "Fine. I was thinkin' that elves mate for life, and that I was glad trolls didn't live forever. In times o' war, people change. Sometimes things get broken that can't get fixed. There ain't nothing I can say that will help, and I don't need to poke at a festerin' wound just to see if I can make it pop."

"It's not festering!" He snapped. "It's old news. Over and done with. I'm _fine."_

Kinta's eyes flashed. "Look mon, I'm tryin' ta be nice, but if you want to pick a fight, we'll have a fight. You ain't fine. Look at what ya did to the tree! You broke yer fists on it. I am here ta tell you that even among trolls that's considered abnormal behavior. You don't gotta tell me about it, but ya oughta talk ta someone about it before it makes ya soul sick!"

Eli's eyes flickered to the tree. The bark had splintered and broken under his blows, and his knuckles stung with the abuse and the newly-repaired bones. Then up to Kinta's face, where the livid bruise Ybella had left blazed at him. It was an effort for him to stop looking at it.

"Talking about it can't help." He said tiredly as he sunk down onto the grass to sit, feeling the old misery rising up again. "It can't change anything."

"People don't talk about things like that in hopes it'll change what happened. They talk about it in hopes that it'll change their feelin's about it. " said Kinta, sitting down next to him.

Eli laughed, a bitter, harsh sound that made Kinta wince. "That's a stupid thing to hope."

"Worked for me, mon. Give it a try."

He stared down at the grass. "Your guess was charitable, but I'm not sure it was right. Ybella must have always had a streak of violence. But when we were young and in love, I never saw it. Her younger sister occasionally would tell me things like one time, she told me Ybella had killed her 'saber kitten, but Ybella swore her sister was jealous and a habitual liar."

"Ain' no love like young love. Burns hot and stupid." Kinta murmured, so she wouldn't interrupt him.

"Stupid is a good word for it. We went through the Sentinel training together, and there were a couple things here and there. Incidents. She got in trouble a couple times. Once she put a nest of stinging ants in another girl's bed, half-killed the girl who was allergic. She told me that the girl was constantly picking on her, and had deserved it, that she didn't know she was allergic. I … I didn't question, and no one told me otherwise. I guess they knew I wouldn't listen."

"We got married when we finished training. My family wanted us to wait a few years. I guess they recognized what I couldn't, but Ybella insisted on getting married right away. She was … said she was afraid of what could happen in war time. So we eloped."

"It sounds like she was different when she was with you. Maybe love made her better."

"Or maybe I was so damn stupid I couldn't see what everyone else did."

"You ain't stupid Eli. She may've lied ta ya about the things she was ashamed of, but you would've known if she didn' love ya."

He was silent for a few moments. "Maybe. I know I wanted to believe her. And the things she lied about, they were few and far between. But as time went on, they got more frequent. Things were fine between us at home, but she'd come home from her assignments, bloody, and … touchy. She'd be almost frantic to make love, and if I asked her how it went, she'd either rage or go silent and refuse to talk to me. I stopped asking. I thought it was just war weariness, and I didn't press her."

Kinta frowned but only said, "Go on."

"Then, one day, she came and asked me if I'd be willing to request being reassigned to the Sentinels. To work with her, because her previous partners refused to work with her over some petty argument. I knew something was wrong by then. Her mood swings had gotten worse, we were even fighting now. A couple times, she'd shifted and attacked me, and I'd had to subdue her. I kept telling myself she wouldn't really hurt me, but I didn't give her a chance to prove it." His face worked, as a dark and ugly emotion came over it. "She was always passionate and apologetic after our fights, and very loving. I thought it was just her losing control because of stress and the violence exorcised it temporarily. But that was the first time I recognized her lying as a lie, right away. The Sentinel Commander wouldn't have tolerated someone refusing an assignment over something silly. But I thought she was just embarrassed over losing her temper. And … And I thought if I worked with her, I could help. Maybe make her days easier so that she could get better control of herself."

Kinta wrapped her arms around her legs, hugging her knees to her chest. It was hard to tell if Eli was more embarrassed, defensive, or mad at himself, by the tone in his voice. What wasn't hard to see was the pain and the shame. She wondered if he even realized the abuse he'd gone through.

"The first couple of months, it wasn't anything special. She seemed to be better, calmer, at first. We had a couple orc attacks, but nothing major. After two weeks when we had seen no action, she started getting tense again. She started suggesting we go check Warsong Gulch for any further action, or possibly "extend our patrols" into the Barrens or to go ambush Splintervale Post."

"I said no, we had our orders, and they were clear. I suggested if she wanted to quit and just go be an adventurer, it would be all right with me. I would go with her. We'd leave the Sentinels together."

"See the world, kill a few people," muttered Kinta. "Not the most romantic of ideas."

Eli gave her a dirty look. "If you're not interested…"

"No no, I'm interested. Why didn't she take ya up on it?" Kinta asked hastily.

"She couldn't. The problem with the Sentinels was worse than I knew. She'd almost killed her partner. They had gotten into an argument over Ybella's treatment of a furbolg prisoner, and Ybella attacked her. She's permanently scarred, and blinded. The druids wouldn't approve Ybella's training unless the Sentinels signed off stating that she had learned to control herself. The Sentinels refused to do anything of the sort or even send her out on patrol alone for the same reasons, so she needed a partner if she wanted to do more than warm the bunkhouse."

Kinta flinched as he mentioned Ybella's permanent harm of another elf. "Why didn' they lock her up?"

Eli ran a hand through his hair. "We … don't breed quickly. The war has taken its toll on many. Ybella isn't insane. She's unstable. And she does have a reputation for prowess." It was a moment before he reluctantly added, "And some feel that her treatment of the furbolg wasn't … unwarranted."

"But they wouldn't let her roam the world by herself."

"We consider ourselves a race with honor. We may keep a mad dog in the yard to frighten the neighbors, but we won't let it run free. She couldn't be trusted to stick to her assignment. There were concerns higher up that … her violent responses might lead to the sort of atrocities that would poison delicate diplomatic relationships."

"That last line sounded like a whole lot of kodo shit."

"I thought so too, when I finally demanded more information. But that was after. In the meantime I was begging them to help me convince her to change her mind. I was certain she would do better in the wild, with a wider territory to roam, new places to explore."

Kinta set her shoulders, forcing herself to say the words that she knew he was dreading. "So, what happened."

Eli stared at his hand, watching the swelling slowly shrink.

"We were scheduled to patrol the road to the Barrens. Ybella snuck out early, leaving a note saying she'd meet me at the crossroads where the road to Ashenvale crosses the road to Felwood. I didn't know she'd left. I wouldn't let her leave the house alone by that time, and it chafed her. It was the Summer Festival, and she'd insisted we go to one party after the other the night before, drinking heavily. I suspect… though it's probably my paranoia, that she planned it that way, to buy herself some hours alone, while I slept it off. I don't know how else she got up that morning. I'd seen her with more cups than I had, and she wasn't a big drinker usually!" His fists clenched, and the injured one thumped the ground.

"Ow."

"Sounds like she did a switcheroo. Drank early, an' stopped when ya were too diddled ta watch."

"I shouldn't have drunk anything. I should have been more aware. If I'd used any of the training my teachers had spent so much time drilling in my head, I would have known she was up to something. It's my fault she was alone."

Kinta shivered. She was starting to dread hearing what had happened as she could feel the black self-loathing in Eli's voice.

"Ya can't blame yerself fer trustin' yer wife."

"I knew she was a liar. I knew she hated my watching her constantly. I knew enough." He shot back, angrily.

"Ya were too close to the situation. Ya were emotionally invested, an' she was manipulating you. Ya might try admitting that she tricked ya, and let the ego bruise take the place of all that guilt. If ya had bent all yer energy an' brains ta manipulatin' someone else to do what ya wanted, would you say it was their fault fer bein' tricked?"

Eli was quiet for a few moments. "No. But what happened was ..." His throat jerked with the convulsive swallow. "Horrible."

Kinta didn't say anything. She wanted to tell him that he didn't need to tell her what happened, but it would have been a lie. He did need to talk about it. She could feel the anguished tension ripping him apart, see the amount of pain festering behind the secret he'd kept for so long. So she clenched her jaw shut to make sure no weak words escaped.

"When I realized she'd gone, I went after her." He swallowed again, his voice husky and barely a whisper as the words crept through his numb lips. "I don't know why they were walking. But a couple of tauren were … I guess they were going to Splintervale Post, with a group of seven kids. Three orcs, one blood elf, one troll, and two tauren. One of the tauren was already down by the time I got there. Ybella was tearing the other one apart."

"The children were screaming. The orcs and the troll were throwing rocks. They ... Ybella turned on them, enraged with bloodlust. I missed with the first shot. I got her with the second, a paralytic. It … She killed three of them. Maybe four. The troll kid was bleeding badly, but I bandaged him up, and I told them to run back towards the Barrens."

Kinta looked away, knowing the shock and disgust in her face wouldn't help. "She killed three children and two adults. Why didn't your precious Sentinels do anything?" She heard the harshness in her own voice, and tried to swallow down her rage.

Eli didn't look up. "Because I lied. Ybella told them that she only saw the adults, and she thought they were going to attack our forces in Warsong Gulch. She said the children had been … injured by the other druids attacking her in a rush and the fight. I supported her account. But they had been carrying white flags with the Cenarion Circle mark on them. They shouldn't have been touched! They should have been safe! And we don't attack those with children. Ever. If I'd told the truth, the Sentinels would have killed her, and I … If I'd been more vigilant, it wouldn't have happened! I married her, I promised to keep her safe, and to care for her. I knew she was dangerous, and I failed her. I couldn't… I couldn't face her dying because I'd failed her." He whispered.

"And so she got away with murdering kids." He flinched at her words.

"I know. If I'd been stronger, I would have told the truth, but I … I couldn't live with it. I couldn't be sure if I'd be telling the truth out of a desire to be free from my personal hell, or for justice. Especially because I was sure she was insane when she attacked the children. She was horrified when she came out of it. She cried for hours afterwards."

"So what did you do?"

"I told the Sentinels I quit, and I privately told the commander that Ybella had to be assigned only to patrols with two or more people, one of whom was senior to her for decision-making, and that she had to be watched at all times. I think the commander suspected something more, but she agreed. I also moved out. I couldn't live with her anymore, knowing that I wasn't able to keep her safe."

"She may've been insane when she attacked the kids, but she went looking for violence, from what ya said. That was her decision."

"It's like she had this need! You ever seen those magic addicts in Silvermoon? It was exactly like that, like she had an addiction driving her to slaughter and violence. We tried calming potions in her food, meditations with the moon priestesses, letting her shred every training dummy in the practice yard for hours a day, but nothing helped. When she had this wild look in her eyes, she wasn't reasonable or even sane. In her better moments, she was miserable and depressed."

"I weren't kiddin' when I said she reminded me of a rabid bear. She didn't smell right." Said Kinta, watching him just in case he went crazy again.

"The priestesses said she didn't have any diseases they could find. We had them look several times."

"I didn't say she smelled sick. I said she smelled wrong. She don't smell like an elf, not entirely."

Eli paused and looked up at her. "What do I smell like?"

"You smell like an elf."

"I know she's an elf. I know her mother and father."

Kinta shrugged. "You're the one who said I was sensitive to nuance. When she came over, I smelled her, and she didn't smell like an elf. An' don't tell me it's 'cause she changes shape. I know what bears an' cats, an' sea lions smell like, an' she didn't smell of those either."

Eli frowned. "We ruled poison out, because someone would have had to give it to her over and over again, and for a month she didn't eat anything but what I gave her. It didn't help."

"Poison don' make ya addicted ta violence an' blood. Only demon taint does that."

"What are you talking about?!"

Kinta squinted at him to see if he was serious, but the confused expression on his face seemed genuine. "Apparently the elvies ain't been readin' their history books. Grom Hellscream? Mannaroth? Demon taint can get in th' blood, an' it makes ya crazy. Makes ya kill when ya don' wanna kill. It changed the orcs down ta the color of their skin. Vol'jin said they didn't smell like orcs no more."

Eli sat back heavily, stunned. "We never checked for that." He mumbled.

"Wouldn't have done ya no good. Demon taint ain't gotta cure. Why ya think the druids ain't fixed the Felwood by now? They been workin' on it for years. All they can do is slaughter the tainted animals, an' kill any demons that pop up. The Proudmore lady an' a whole buncha priests managed ta fix Grom for a little while, but dyin' cured him. I'm sorry."

Eli's shoulders slumped. "So it is going to get worse."

"Yeah. An' somewhere in there, she's gonna know it."

"But this is a theory. We don't know for sure that's what the problem is."

Kinta didn't say anything.

"We don't. Where would she have gotten tainted?!" He demanded.

"Anywhere. There's a large patch of demons down in Demon Fall Canyon here in Ashenvale. There's that whole mess of 'em up northeast of Auberdine. Why ya askin' me?" Kinta stood up, and moved over to his mount, rifling around until she found her bow and arrows.

"We're not in the Felwood yet," Eli objected.

"Plans change." She slung the bow over her shoulder, and started digging through the packs. Eli watched her go through all the bags, before she turned to him, with her hands on her hips.

"Ya idiot!"

"What?"

"Ya only brought your bedroll."

He blinked. "You didn't mind sharing before. I didn't think you'd care, and they're heavy. We're travelling light, remember?"

"Some things are worth a little extra weight." Kinta grumbled. "Ya expecting we're gonna share this thing?!"

Eli stiffened. The sudden stab of rejection mixed with disappointment was sharper all the more because it was unexpected.

"Well, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to assume my company was welcome!" Eli snapped. His head was really pounding away now. And he had been looking forward to curling up next to a friendly warm body. He wasn't going to admit he wanted a hug.

"Don't be emo, elf. It ain't your company. Look at this elfy shit. I'm gonna freeze." She held up the thin blanket. "I can see through this thing, it's two feet short, an' we're goin' north! Tomorrow we're goin' bear huntin' for a good blanket. An' yer pillow is … squishy." She made squishy sound like a grievous sin committed by pillows of ill repute.

"Why is it hunters are never happy unless they're wrapped in something else's skin?" Eli asked, his spirits rising sharply, as he stood and drifted over towards her. "And it's warmer than it looks."

"That'd be a cute trick," grumbled Kinta, kicking a couple rocks out of the flattest spot. "'Cause it looks like a tissue. Be a good elf an' build a fire, wouldya?"

He did so while she laid out the bedroll. He had coaxed a spark into the kindling when she walked past him with the coils of rope on her shoulder. "What are those for?"

"Security."

When she came back about ten minutes later, he said, "You never set traps before."

"I had Lakshmi before." She said, before grabbing one of the fishcakes he'd started warming near the fire on a rock, and biting into it.

Eli realized he was hungry, and reached over to snag two for himself. They ate in silence until the fishcakes were gone, and two bottles of melon juice lay empty at their feet. Kinta moved to lay down on the mat, her bow next to her in reach. Eli moved to sit next to her, his hip touching her shoulder.

"Eli."

"Yes?"

"I'm gonna say somethin', 'cause I want you to think about it. It's gonna make ya angry. But think about it first, then ya can yell."

Eli shifted. "All right."

"I know ya marriage was hell on ya. At the time, ya were so racked with guilt that ya couldn't think straight. But ya wife is still in hell. If she be demon tainted, then she's feelin' herself goin' crazy, not knowin' why. An' she ain't in control of herself. She can't even kill herself, 'cause the demon blood don't let its victims free. Ya love her still, ya need ta help her. Lettin' her suffer is cruel." Kinta watched his hands curl into fists, and the knuckles whiten with the strain of remaining still.

"How can you … you're saying…" He couldn't even get the words out past the strangling ball of rage, fear, and shock.

"I'm sayin' yer the one person she could hope would help her."

"You don't KNOW that's what's wrong!"

"Ya ruled everything else out. She's either batshit crazy or she's demon-tainted. Batshit crazy wouldn't make her smell funny."

"And I'm supposed to trust a troll that can't even talk to her own people is an expert in how all elves smell?!" Eli snarled. He felt a grim satisfaction at seeing the hurt in her eyes, before he stalked off. "I'll take first watch."

Kinta tugged the flimsy blanket over on top of her, and pulled her bow closer to her, feeling an ache in her heart. "I guess this is why elves and trolls can't be friends." She muttered, before closing her eyes to try and sleep.


End file.
